Posts by doublelayer

Make Linux safer… or die trying

Not that they always do it well, but they allow people who aren't as familiar with administration as you or I (and sometimes us too) to use programs without the dependency snarl that arises whenever you can't find it in your repositories or you don't want to use the one in there.

I had a program I wanted to use. It needed a recent LTS version of OpenSSL. I wanted to use it on an OpenSUSE system that didn't provide that version of OpenSSL (they were on an older stable version). The program concerned wasn't in the repositories at all because it was a new project. Incidentally, if you downloaded the binary the author made, it wouldn't run either because it expected a later version of glibc; the author had compiled for an older version to have compatibility with an older version of Debian, but not so old that it worked with the version the user was on. To get this to run, I had to compile several things from source, including OpenSSL, then modify the makefiles to point to my portable versions of the libraries, then tell the admin who wanted to run it to make sure not to jumble these libraries with any of the other copies around the system. I should point out that the OpenSUSE version being used was still supported at the time and I didn't have the authority to make anyone update distros. This is what can cause problems and why a system for packaging dependencies when the repositories don't have them has been needed. If you don't need it, feel free not to use it, but people wrote it because it was solving a problem.

Re: Chrome OS?

That is one drawback worth duplicating, but I have more if you're looking for a longer list:

3) The fact that it doesn't allow the extent of tasks that other things with the kernel in them do. You have to hack your way in to replace Chrome OS with something else, using device-based methods, in order to get the kind of access that comes as standard with everything else. This alone is enough for it to lose the Linux brand in my mind.

4) That the security updates that you do get will end at some arbitrary point for no good technical reason. Done to sell more hardware that will be just as capable as this was. On Linux, if your distro ends support for your version, you update to the next version and your support comes back. The ability to do this lasts until a technical reason makes your hardware obsolete, which is measured in multiple decades.

5) The baked-in connection to everything Google, from closed-source browsers to single-provider services for backup. If you don't like one service on any other Linux, you replace it. Not so much with Chrome OS.

6) All the unremovable snooping baked into it. (worth mentioning as many times as necessary)

Musk's view count antics are perfect cover for Twitter's paid API failure

Re: Algorithms

That would never work. The correct algorithm is

MuskImpressionCount = RealImpressionCount*1000000+DaysSinceTweet*100000+SecondsSinceTweet%86400

It doesn't work unless he can watch the numbers tick up, and anyone knows that a number with a lot of zeros at the end is either rounded too much or made up completely. The question is whether any of Twitter's engineers has participated in the underhanded C contest and can hide this from the other engineers when they make some unrelated changes.

Microsoft switches Edge’s PDF reader to pay-to-play Adobe Acrobat

To be fair, the PDF tools that are the most important are built in to Windows too. Print to PDF is probably the most useful because you can save PDFs from any application that doesn't already support it, and they've had that in Windows, not Edge, so Adobe shouldn't get to poison that at least for now. It doesn't have a PDF editor built in like the Mac's Preview. Previous topics on PDF have indicated that others here like PDF a lot more than I do, so maybe this will make more sense to them.

Amazon convinces FCC it can avoid space junk chaos

"Icon since the aliens won’t be able to visit either."

That depends on why the aliens want to visit. If they're the type who doesn't like competition, they can probably just travel on by, laugh about how we couldn't even manage to get off our planet without messing it up, then fire into our junk cloud to expand it and destroy anything that still works. While we're busy dodging falling internet pieces and trying to debug the network drops, they can cheerfully blow us up whenever is convenient. If they're friendly, then they probably have some methods of interfering with junk and might helpfully remove enough of it to land something, then give us some tools to finish the rest of it. I think the scenario most likely to cause them problems (assuming basic sci-fi alien tactics and drives) is if we're tasty, in which case they don't want to pollute their food supply but it's probably not worth the slow cleanup process.

"Related to that, if the FCC refused, what would stop a fully owned Amazon company based in the small country of Togreenze doing the launch instead?"

This is the only part that has a satisfactory answer. Nothing would prevent them launching the satellites from Togreenze, but they would then be prohibited from selling communications with the satellites in the U.S., where they're presumably looking for customers. The FCC regulates any communications equipment in the U.S., so if they say no to the uplinks to the satellites, the entire domestic service would be cut off and no profit for Amazon. If they're hoping to make profits there, they'll get that approval before the expensive launches. If they don't intend to sell the service to anybody in the U.S., they're free to ignore the FCC as they like.

The fact that this is the only restriction that affects these companies is not good. The FCC is not an expert on whether something is a bad idea in space, and it obviously has no jurisdiction over international activities or input from international governments.

Re: The end of space

The concern is that while you're waiting a twentieth of a long lifetime for the satellites to come down, they might hit something, possibly another dead satellite. All those pieces generated by the collision will have decaying orbits too. Just five years to clean up all that rubbish, except that each of those pieces now gets its chance to hit something, and that would generate more pieces. Waiting five years before more space systems can be set up is a problem.

This problem gets harder to handle as we throw more stuff up there. The U.S. has already authorized two companies to put up tens of thousands of things each, each company hoping to make billions in profits. The UK has a company of their own that is planning to set up a constellation, though they kept changing their minds on how big and what for. What stops other countries from deciding to do the same? Russia has plenty of space that's poorly cabled. They could benefit from a satellite network, but it obviously can't be a U.S.-based one. Why don't they find a couple of their companies to put up thousands. India's got ambitions to expand their space program, mobile-only internet coverage for some parts of their country, and poor environmental regulations on the surface let alone kilometers away. See if they can make a partnership to set up their own. If India did it, China will want to do it, and in any case it could be handy for the military bases they're building in far away places without great communication links. The EU, not to be left out of the sovereign internet game, might want their own program. All these people launching things will reduce prices, so more countries or companies would have the ability to start launching now and worry about whether there's a management problem later. Perhaps it's worth worrying about how we're going to deal with the problem before all that happens, which does not include giving some head starts to someone now so they get the first mover advantage while we've frozen everyone else.

Apple complains UK watchdog wants to make iOS a 'clone' of Android

Re: @Ken Hagan

Oh yes, I can. Monopoly power doesn't just switch on when you pass a certain market share. A combination of "really big" and "not many alternative options" gets you there. In the case of Microsoft, there were plenty of other choices. Nobody made you buy a Windows box in the 90s. You could buy a Mac, from Apple or from one of the other manufacturers who made authorized clones at that time. You could buy something that ran Solaris or a few other Unix variants. There was even a new choice making waves in the technical community called Linux that would run if you got an Intel processor, and the classic BSD was out there if you wanted it. Want more support, how about BeOS or RiscOS (both were going to die, but that wasn't guaranteed yet)? Plenty of choices. That didn't stop Microsoft having a position in the market strong enough to have anticompetitive effects.

Apple is in a stronger position in the mobile market. Its market share is lower, but it's not tiny. In developed countries, Apple's market share ranges between 63% (Japan) and 29% (Germany). In some countries that host a lot of readers that is 47% (UK), 49% (Canada), 59% (US) and 41% (Australia). In the market, there's basically one alternative, which is also being investigated. Oligopolies, especially one with the chance of tacit collusion, can have similar effects to complete monopolies. The laws that deal with them, unsurprisingly, allow market regulators to pursue them as well.

Re: Clone of Android

I didn't write nor do I entirely agree with the comment, but if you limit it to mobile developer, people who mostly write apps for Android and/or IOS will likely have heard of those things. Kotlin's a popular language for Android apps (because it uses many of the Java-based components) that can also be built for IOS. Xamarin is Microsoft's C# stack for multiplatform including mobile. MAUI is a .NET-based UI system. I don't do any mobile development and I've heard of all three. You don't have to use them and if you don't work in mobile you don't have to know about them, but not having heard of them if you work in that area is like writing backend software without knowing what Postgresql is (you may use other databases, but it's bound to have come up some time with how common it is).

The original comment, however, is wrong. The things they listed mean that you don't have to write IOS apps in Swift or Objective C (mostly), but they don't prevent you having to use a Mac. You can write a cross-platform application, but unless you're willing to send the IOS branch in completely untested, you will need at least one Mac to use things like the IOS device simulator or to send it to an IOS device to test. You can try to hack your way around that by using others' IOS simulators, for example, but it's going to take a lot more effort and be less reliable than doing that work on a Mac would be. This is probably one reason why there are more applications written for Android than IOS.

And a stock Android is what? Google's devices only? I'll point out that, while Google's security and feature update record is better than average and that their phones are more likely to get support from AOSP-based solutions, there are manufacturers that provide security updates for longer than Google does. Even if Google was longest on such things, I don't consider that acceptable. After all, how would you react if Microsoft announced tomorrow that Surface users will have security bugs patched immediately, but people using a different manufacturer's devices will just get them some time, later but who knows how later, and to head off the required joke still with no guarantee they won't break something?

I support the ending of Apple's restrictions, but it is undeniable that their software and security support record is better than any Android manufacturer, and I do mean every single one in existence with the possible exception of Fairphone, but probably not even them. I prefer my operating systems more open, and that sometimes takes precedence over support lifetimes, but I will acknowledge Apple's credentials in that area.

Re: You missed the point

Somehow requiring you not to, by your own admission, tinker with things you don't want changed is breaking your phone? All you have to do is not change the options you don't want changed. For most or all of them, if you do change them, you can change them back immediately with no lasting effects. The good news for you is that more choices for me doesn't require you to make any of the new choices I'm making.

Re: 99% er

So if I'm understanding you correctly:

1. Developers will make shoddy web apps that you can't trust. You don't want this.

2. If they have to list them in the App Store then they won't make shoddy apps because a reason you didn't say.

3. Therefore the App Store makes good apps from the same developers that would make bad ones otherwise?

If what you want is "a set of reliable, secure, integrated and managed apps", you need to only install apps that fit all those adjectives, and if one of their authors breaks that, whether they stay in the store or go to the web, you have to change it. Here's a basic example. I can download a truly massive number of navigation apps on an iPhone, some of which will work offline, some of which won't share my data, some of which use up-to-date data sources, and some of which do none of these things. It's my job to pick one that I think is best, and the store doesn't protect me from any of the poorer options. Having a mandatory Apple tax does not ensure any of your praise is or remains true.

The Balthazar laptop: An all-European RISC-V Free Hardware computer

"Thing about Pine is that they don't do software, like at all. They depend on the community, so unless some user decides to fix the issues nobody will."

Yes, that is the issue. For me, that's acceptable if I'm using the device for entertainment, and for me playing with tech and fixing things can sometimes be entertainment, but I tend not to spend much money on things for that. I can't buy such a device for work where its reliability is important, and I can't suggest anyone else do so.

Open source software is in the state it is because I feel comfortable giving someone a Linux installation on normal hardware and expecting that they will be able to use it (maybe after a tutorial) without it breaking on them. Maybe it won't have all the applications they want, or they'll have to get used to LibreOffice having its options in menus instead of a ribbon, but it's not going to fail outright. I don't have that confidence in open hardware projects given the history they've had, and I alone don't have the ability to fix that. The community's efforts in getting there are slow and while I support them, I can't and don't count on them. This may change in years to come, for example I'm happier giving someone a Raspberry Pi as a production machine than I would have been when those were newer, but it's not in that state yet.

Importantly, it's not just Pine64 doing this. It's all the open hardware projects based on nonstandard hardware. Even the Raspberry Pi has been missing hardware video acceleration in things like Firefox, and they're by far the best out there. Every open hardware device in my experience requires its own custom operating systems with weird patches, none of which I'm familiar with because I didn't build them, and maintaining that is possible if you do a lot of research, but not really what I plan to spend a lot of time doing.

"It's probably just me, but I do wish there was an open hardware laptop for the high end."

I can explain why there isn't. The problem with all these completely open projects is that things don't work. Every one that shows up has a few missing features in hardware or software that someone has to get around. Take Pine64's PineBook Pro. I want one of these. It looks cool, it's low-power, reasonably fast processor. Yet even though it's existed for years, there are still lots of notes about which software will just not run and which software has to be compiled with some patch on an anonymous git repository, that even when using the manufacturer's own docking station, not all the ports function correctly, and hardware-specific operating systems with unclear maintenance. I still want one, but I can't pretend that I could give this to anyone nontechnical and expect them to use it. This project will have similar problems.

For something I expect to tinker with, a cheap device can be explained away as a toy that doesn't have to work and can require more manual maintenance. If I'm spending a lot on it, I expect more things to work. Theoretically, a company could charge more for something and use that money to do the work that the cheap open platforms didn't, and Liam's suggestion of the Framework laptop is such a project, but it's worth keeping in mind that that's just a good laptop with relatively open hardware, not a ground up redesign. That project is a good one, and I'm happily typing this message on the one I bought, but it's not in the same realm as projects like these designed for completely open hardware and software.

What's up with IT, Doc? Rabbit hole reveals cause of outage

The way I use it, it's an adjective. Maybe we're using it in different ways.

SpaceX cuts off Ukraine's 'offensive' Starlink use

Re: State of Russia's space program

He could always get some people to try firing a laser directly at one of the satellites. That's unlikely to go full Kessler syndrome, but if they can actually hit the satellite, probably not too much fun for it. I'm not sure about the feasibility of it, but the point is that you wouldn't need to know it works. Just trying it once would be a warning shot and if you give any physicist* I know a laser and permission to try firing it, they'll try it.

* To be fair to physicists, I would also be a bit consumed by the cool factor. I've restricted it to physicists because I don't get to use any lasers in my work and they know better than I how to try using one as a weapon.

Scammers steal $4 million in crypto during face-to-face meeting

Re: NFC?

There's always the chance that they didn't, using instead their mobile data, only the attacker had a stingray that captured their traffic. However, there's a healthy chance that people are just unaware of security and do stupid things and this guy could have been one of them. Things that we know not to do aren't as common knowledge as they should be.

Re: Proof of Funds

The part where they had to prove crypto was a bit weird, but proof of funds in general is less weird. Startups aren't filing public statements about internal information, and they're things that need more diligence when you're going to invest in them, because scams are a lot easier and failure much more likely. As such, if a company claims to have a bunch of money available but it also wants yours, it's reasonable to check that they have the money, for the same reason that it's reasonable to check that they have the level of technology they claim to have. Doing that by showing a crypto wallet on a screen, a UI that is easy to fake, is the weird part of this.

Find My Kids app is basically AirTags for your offspring

You can, but you would then need to pay for the connection to the watch, which isn't as simple as putting a SIM in it. I also think you can have only one watch per iPhone, so if the parent has one of their own, they'll need another phone for the child and that's now two mobile connections. The equipment isn't cheap, even if you buy second hand. That said, having children isn't a cheap activity, and the cost for this setup may not be that large compared to other expenses even if the total cost ends up being a big number (doesn't stop it being unnecessary though).

No more free love: Netflix expands account sharing restrictions

Re: Infinitely worth every penny. Division by zero error!!!

I don't know what their internal numbers are, but I imagine they've calculated the costs for sending large files to multiple users and for paying royalties. They can use their existing logs to see how much less of both of these they'd be paying if they cut off certain classes of users, with the possibility that any person cut off may either stop watching, saving them the costs, or buy another membership, increasing their revenue. They probably don't know any way to accurately estimate how many of each will do that, but they can more accurately estimate the savings possibility.

Google unleashes fightback against ChatGPT, a Bard by any other name

Re: Like running face first into a wall...

"Voice assistants are last weeks news, but somehow the exact same technology that people decided not to give a damn about attached to the buzzword of "AI chatbot" is shiny and new."

The technology is not the same. Not that either is very impressive, but voice assistants never tried to engage in conversation. They listened to a free form sentence, and if it wasn't one of a few forms they recognized, they rejected it. Say anything unusual to Siri and it will put your transcript in a Google search box. Say anything unusual to Alexa and it will say "Hmmm. I don't know how to answer that". Say anything unusual to GPT and it will still try to answer your question, possibly with made up data or with a don't know response, but in the form of a properly structured response to your question.

It would have made sense for Amazon, the company that's invested the most in having a voice assistant that they talk a lot about, to get a chatbot so their box could pretend to engage in conversation with the users. Maybe that would have added enough novelty for people to use the devices, because it would stop acting like a malfunctioning command line. It would probably also have had many chances to advertise products, and that would probably appeal to a company like Amazon. They didn't bother.

Eager young tearaway almost ruined Christmas with printer paper

Re: Of all the confusing icons

"How many adults have never held one of those "receivers"? Or even seen one,"

In developed countries, or at least where I grew up, everyone has seen one. I am old enough that I didn't have a mobile phone in my childhood, but young enough that I got one not much later. Even when I had one, lots of places still had old phones, especially offices and schools, where the children would see them and people using them. Likely schools which are never using the most advanced technology still have them. Everyone knows what those are. Older phones, like rotary dials or crank ringing devices, are not familiar, and fax machines would qualify, but landline receivers are common enough that they'll still be familiar. Maybe in another generation. This might be different in less developed countries where landline infrastructure wasn't well established, where mobile phones are a lot more common than landlines ever were.

Re: NBG

I wasn't the downvoter and I wouldn't say that he did. I also don't think the original post said he did, so you're arguing against an empty panel.

If I have to guess why there is a downvote, maybe it's because Gates, though he didn't invent the computer or the microcomputer, was still rather important in the development of personal computers. Love Microsoft or hate it, and I know there are many who hate it, it's had a large impact on the market both historically and in the modern day. A lot of the design of modern computers is due to choices made by early Microsoft, just as the original design decisions of Unix when it was meant for a smaller use case and set of users are still important today. Gates, Wozniak, and Thompson didn't have to invent computers (and none of them did) to be important to their history (and all of them are).

Re: Procedure update

In my experience, accountants tend to be a lot like us. When we explain to somebody (in my case only when they ask and after warning them that they don't care) about how a compiler works, or what DNS is for and why you need it, or what makes for a well-designed database, people find it very boring and also difficult to understand. Accountants have a different set of interests that they're good at solving but involve a lot of complex moving parts that we don't know a lot about, likely in this case related to the concern that certificates that weren't confirmed destroyed could be used in a fraud scheme, and even the appearance that a fraud scheme was possible wasn't acceptable. Those details would have taken some explanation about how share certificate processing worked in that company, though.

Just as there are people who work in tech and can't make a database that works at all, this doesn't mean that accountants are necessarily good at what they do or at connecting what they do to the rest of the organization. I think the best accountants are like the best technical staff, good at making their complex knowledge work for those who don't want to know about it, even if that involves hiding from those who don't understand and just getting things done.

Re: Communication....

Any day's a good day for a BOFH. The one you mentioned is here.

School laptop auction devolves into extortion allegation

Re: Investigating RDA ?

"Would you do business with a PC shop that openly admits it examines data on PCs that pass through their hands?"

No. On the other hand, would I do business with a shop that notices that a disk wasn't wiped without having to poke through all the files? Sure. There's a difference between "I noticed this disk has a filesystem, which means it wasn't wiped" and "I had a read through all the emails I could recover because why not". The first is acceptable and worth warning about if it indicates a risk of additional damage, as in this case. The second is unacceptable and likely criminal.

Re: Does the TSA know what "online" means?

I interpreted that to mean that nobody, after obtaining the list, turned around and put the entire thing elsewhere. That means that I can't go out to some open file site and obtain a copy of the list. The only person known to have seen it outside the airline was a researcher who won't be handing out copies, and if any more malicious people got copies before the server was secured, they aren't making them available. That means that the list hasn't been as compromised as if it was available to literally anyone with a connection.

Re: Never should have been possible.

"All drives must be destroyed when done with service. All but one company I worked for had this policy"

All companies I've worked for have had this policy. None of them did it reliably. The small ones were disorganized enough that you could walk off with a disk and nobody would know. The large ones were so large that people didn't understand the process for disposing of equipment. I somewhat recently had a discussion with a team where we determined that an old machine under a desk was not used by any of us, maybe from the last people to use the office but nobody knew who that was, we didn't know who to call about this*, we didn't have an identifier we could tell them even if we found out, the machine did still have a disk in it (we assumed it wasn't wiped but nobody wanted to check), and that every alternative course to leaving it under the desk seemed more risky**. If anyone hid a bug in it, they got to listen to us for a long time.

* We were developers, so we knew enough to manage our own machines (and IT trusted us to do so) but we didn't know any of the IT people. I sent a message to our local IT helpdesk, and they didn't respond.

** We considered wiping or destroying the disk for the company because even if they cared about the data, there was no chance they'd find it, but we decided they could blame us for destroying corporate property. We considered turning it on and connecting it to the network in the hope that monitoring software would find it and someone would do something, but if it was unpatched that could be undesirable. We considered bringing it to the IT guy and leaving it there, but that room wasn't secured and our place was, the guy was frequently working remotely and we had no clue if he came in at all, and the data on the computer was potentially sensitive even to other employees. Then we decided that talking more about the machine would delay our work and moved it to the corner.

Could 2023 be the year SpaceX's Starship finally reaches orbit?

Re: Gwynne Shotwell

There are some feasibility limits. Finding places to operate the rockets without annoying everyone would pose some challenges. Likely they would have to operate them from rural locations far from where their travelers want to start, and having to drive for an hour to get to the launch facility and another hour from the landing facility to your destination would make it pretty bad at routine commuting. At this point, it'd just be a faster trip. Getting people to pay a significantly higher bill for a faster trip has been tried before, and it didn't prove profitable. That faster trip wasn't as unpleasant as this would be, either.

I wouldn't take the suggestion seriously and I think they're aware that it's potentially possible in the same way that building an orbital station for tourists is possible. We could reproduce the ISS's facilities and launch people to it, but few people would be able to afford the stay, few of those would be willing to pay even though they could, and if someone went, they wouldn't enjoy the experience as a vacation. I'm sure you could get a few rich people to voluntarily sign up for it, but not enough of them to justify building the station. Possible, but not a great business idea. This might change eventually if we improve the technology for keeping people alive and healthy in orbit, but not in the next couple years.

South Korea to treat crypto tokens and virtual assets as if they were securities

Re: Not securities

Some cryptoassets are maintained by a specific company and controllable by them. I think those fall into the definition of security rather well. Decentralized, no-authority cryptocurrencies are more like commodities. I think any regulation that treats these two categories as subject to the same regulations as other securities and commodities is logical and should probably be attempted given the success that crypto-themed fraud has had so far on uninformed investors (they think they're investors, anyway, but maybe gamblers applies better).

Twitch bans AI-generated Seinfeld show for making transphobic jokes

Re: Is the intelligence really artificial?

This doesn't matter that much to the point I made. Whether you filter the output based on a view you no longer think is valid, based on a view that you think is fine but others don't think is valid, or just to prevent it from spitting out any more of the stupid jokes mentioned in last week's article on this show, that's a filter which will change what you see but won't artificially limit the ability for the model to produce useful text on a topic you didn't filter out. You can argue with the settings someone put on the filter, but that's not relevant to the effects of filtering in general on models that produce text.

Re: Is the intelligence really artificial?

We're all filtered in some ways. Teaching is not just a process of giving you a bunch of stuff to put in your brain, but also pointing out the wrong stuff. A good teacher not only tells you how to solve a quadratic equation, but shows you why you can't prove something the way you just did and how to do it correctly. That's a factual correction, but it uses the same filtering system that telling a program not to say something does. You're not prevented from using the faulty proof in the future, but if you want to appear correct you'll remember and avoid making the same mistake.

Regardless of your opinions on what we tell the programs not to say, removing undesirable output is not a limiting factor on the program's "intelligence" if we have a program we deem to be intelligent. Depending on what we choose to restrict, we could be reducing the program's independence, but I would question whether we want many independent programs (and even if you do, whether you want one that's entirely independent and could decide, to take the obvious sci-fi trope, that killing you is not filtered out so it's going to do it).

Cat saves 'good bots' from Twitter API purge

But Musk is a genius. Only someone like him could manage to make the only car company to have full self driving, and think of how cool Spacex is, and if you don't know what he's doing then that just proves that he's smarter than you, and if there's no obvious reason for a very public announcement then it means he's hiding the secret plan to prevent the haters from messing with it, and if he breaks Twitter then that's his plan to get rid of all the problems with it before he brings it back, and anyone who has more money than you must be better than you which is why I've put all my money into Tesla shares, and look at how big that company is compared to the other places that make cars, which definitely doesn't have anything to do with the item before this in the list.

Sorry, the inexplicable fans will be here soon to start explaining why something that looks stupid isn't stupid, so I figured I could save them some time trotting out the classics.

Ransomware scum launch wave of attacks on critical, but old, VMWare ESXi vuln

Re: Haha!

I'm having trouble understanding what you want the alternative to be. Would refusing to include any non-English words in an English article be better under your conception? Couldn't that be interpreted as negative as well? Maybe this confusion is due to my missing the mockery you imply is present; all I see is a note demonstrating that French language authorities made a local word for ransomware, as they do with many English-rooted technical terms, and Italian either didn't make one or didn't use it.

Chinese surveillance balloon over US causes fearful gasbagging

Re: Why not shoot it down ?

And, in case this needed proving, a plane has just gone there and fired a missile which took down the balloon. No experimental tech was needed and the balloon went down.

Re: Why not shoot it down ?

"It's rather higher up than most of our planes normally fly."

But not high enough that military planes can't fly there*, and I think China is also aware that we have high-altitude military planes. The point being that we don't need technology that China's not aware of to make a balloon fall down, so if it became necessary to take down the balloon without giving out any military secrets, it would be possible.

* The internet appears to be filled with copies of this article that don't mention the altitude, but other articles specify an altitude of 60,000 feet or 18 km. That's well above civilian air and routine military traffic, but several planes are capable of getting there and some are explicitly designed to do so.

Re: Difficult

With just bullets, kind of hard. With bullets and something that can start fires, a bit easier. We have lots of weapons that can start fires these days, and in fact a lot of weapons that have specifically been designed to try not to start a fire this time, so I think we may have more options on downing something filled with hydrogen if it ever shows up.

Re: Why not shoot it down ?

All you'd need in this case is a plane that can shoot at a target. I think China is already aware that the U.S. has planes with guns mounted on them. Not a lot can be learned from that.

It's your human hubris holding back AI acceptance

Re: Outsourcing human experience.

I agree. The obvious counterpoint to the study is to consider what an anti-AI person would have done with the alternative. "Gullible participants trust answers from a computer without context". It's clear that's the alternative and that the participants have no idea how likely the computer is to know what it's doing.

I thought so. Well actually I thought that none of the answers were that great and wondered about the size of essay they'd take for an analysis, but of the four options, C provides critical information to debunking the obvious alternative and D provides extra circumstantial data. Both would help, but if I can only take one, I'll take C. I wonder who wrote the test and how much effort they put into making sure it was logical.

Re: Outsourcing human experience.

"If we outsource fundamental human experience to AI, the humans have no more relevance, and would be better replaced with AI drones entirely."

If we were able to outsource things to AIs and not have everything break, which we can't, then I would say we go for it. If a computer can solve a problem better than a human can, then obsoleting the manual process for the better automatic process isn't making them "an accessory object to an inhuman overlord". It's making them a person who no longer has to do that boring thing because they have a machine that can do it. That's just as true if the machine is a sink so the user doesn't have to carry buckets of water to wash things then find a place to dispose of it or a computer that can produce a statistical report so the user doesn't have to manually find all the different measurements of a dataset and try different basic regressions on their own. AI, if we ever get a reliable version, will be a tool which can be used to allow humans more ability to do what they want. It won't have to be an overlord if we don't make it that way, and I don't know of many who want an overlord, so it seems unlikely.

Prepare to be shocked: Employees hate this One Weird Clause

Re: How long is contract valid for?

The contract will specify this explicitly. The legal language will boil down to "This part is about what you have to do while you're employed, and this part is about what you have to do while you're employed and afterward". They'll put in a sentence making it clear that the contract doesn't just end when you quit or are fired. This is quite normal, and some clauses of that nature are enforceable.

A contract is a detailed agreement, and there can be perpetual clauses or clauses that extend past the end date of other clauses. Don't assume that quitting automatically voids the contract.

No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data

Re: The old ways is the best ways

You want to play a game of who can adapt fastest to unwanted scraping? Companies that don't want you to scrape can mess with the UI in so many ways that it's often not worth doing it if they have the knowledge and will to combat it. Combine that with a terms of service that forbids it (possibly not enforceable but do you want to argue it in front of all the courts because they have more lawyers than you). If you're planning to make a profit from consistently scraping a company that doesn't want to be scraped, you face some large challenges. Maybe Twitter will fail at properly blocking scraping, and I'm in favor of people trying it because having overworked engineers constantly changing things to foil scrapers means it's more likely to break and watching it break would be fun, but I wouldn't want to set up a business doing it.

Re: Maybe he really doesn't care about the money at all

"Curious why the saudis would invest in twitter. I wouldn't have thought it would be a big thing in their parts."

Your assumption is incorrect. As of June 2022, an estimated 71.9% of the Saudi population were Twitter users, third to WhatsApp and Instagram which are both Facebook products and thus can't be bought so easily. It would make sense for them to get control of something that popular for their own political ends, whether that involves censoring stuff for the locals, monitoring private messages, or getting more personal information on people they want to hack (first with spy software, then with autopsy tools). I don't know what power they have currently, but I wouldn't trust Musk to tell us honestly. If the company went bankrupt, they'd likely get more control of the remains.

Re: They just did this in the wrong order

Or alternatively, that guy might take the adverts to a different social media company and Twitter will have fewer people looking at them to which they can show other adverts. It might help with revenue, but it might also decrease the size of the user base. They've decided to find out which factor makes the larger difference to their financials in production.

Re: They just did this in the wrong order

That depends what form the advertising takes. Unwanted ads for things I didn't want? That drives me away and I try to block it. However, the post you replied to was about a very different kind: promotions sent out by the company selling it seen only by those who subscribe to it. That does tend to work better. I'm on a few companies' newsletters where they announce new products, discounts, etc. These are basically ads they send to me, but I not only agreed to see them, but I volunteered for them. I did this because I'm actually interested in possibly buying some of their stuff, and when that's no longer the case, I'll unsubscribe. Similarly, I also periodically visit a site which is basically a stream of ads from Chinese companies making weird items because it's fun to see what strange combinations they've come up with. That's not on Twitter, but if I liked a company and decided to go check whether they've posted any discounts I'm likely to use, that would attract some traffic.

Re: They just did this in the wrong order

"So I'm not sure why he would expect Twitter to provide that service to his business for free. TV stations and newspapers didn't."

Twitter doesn't have to provide that service for free, but every other social media company does and is going to keep doing so. Twitter benefited from people posting information because it drove attention, both theirs and that of people reading it, so Twitter could shove ads at them. Since the other companies are still going to keep allowing that, people faced with a new request for payment might well decide to abandon Twitter, and Twitter would lose the revenue they were bringing in from the viewers. It's not that Twitter is or should be obliged to provide the service for free, but that there are downsides to losing the business and charging is likely to lose them clients when their competition is still allowing free usage.

As Apple sales slide, Tim Cook says fanbois will tolerate higher iPhone prices

Pride over where the designer happened to be is a bit crazy, but if I wanted to defend him, I'd point out that it was designed by more than one person, and the other people were more likely to be Americans or even Californians by birth, if that matters. Although probably the design team will have people in multiple countries from even more national backgrounds, because they only said "Designed in California", not "Designed exclusively by Californians".

Qualcomm feels the squeeze because you don't want a new smartphone right now

Shortages for components of phones have eased for this period, so not really. If you want a phone, you can go and get one quickly and cheaply if you get one that's designed to be fine rather than one that's designed to appeal to someone who doesn't know that there is a limited amount of money available.

People aren't buying as many phones because they don't need to replace them, because inflation has caused them to cut back on expensive items that they don't need to replace right now, or because they don't see advantages in any of the new products. It's happening the same way with a variety of other items, including most consumer tech.

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

Why, whenever there is an article about companies with many workers is there somebody to post a question like this that completely ignores what the business actually involves? Can you make an HTML form? Great. So can I. Now I'd like to see you figure out legal compliance to serve as a financial company in nearly every country which works with each country's tax authorities automatically so businesses can use the thing. Try doing that on your own. Which part do you think is harder?

I'm sure some employees of the company are unnecessary. That doesn't change the fact that their technology is more complex than a single form and that their business is more complex than a UI and a database.