Posts by prh99

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

California's law cleared the state assembly 58-0, which means Republican's when a long. Colorado's bill passed the state senate 8-1, that 1 was Sen. Lisa Cutter, D-Littleton.

Make no mistake this has bipartisan support, so you know something sinister is happening. Republicans in Congress have propose the App Store Accountability Act, which does something similar at the federal level and maybe actually be worse. It doesn't require submitting IDs but punishes apps for accuracy failures, basically pushing them to collect IDs to avoid liability....seems to be a favorite tactic for Congress in questionable laws.

Surrender as a service: Microsoft unlocks BitLocker for feds

It was pretty obvious this was the intent when the default was saving the back up key to OneDrive instead of just a flash drive. They're quietly turning on OneDrive backup to get your files as well.

AI's $3T infrastructure binge continues despite lack of clear profits

I look forward to these AI companies imploding and with any luck ceasing to exist in their current form.

Cloudflare CEO threatens to make the Winter Olympics a political football after Italy slugs it with a fine

Re: "a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online"

They sent settlement letters to alleged pirates through contractors and even sued a few.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella becomes AI influencer, asks us all to move beyond slop

Cognitive amplifiers? Hardly, people who lean on AI too much end up dependent on it, as their own skills atrophy. Though I am sure that's what MicroSlop would love to happen.

tldr; Please please find a good use for our sh*tty product so we can justify the insane spending, and let stop hyping job killing potential cause tends to piss off people who aren't tech bro c-suites or large investors.

De-duplicating the desktops: Let's come together, right now

Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.

That just sounds like someone who wants Outlook and nothing else unless it's an exact clone.

Clearview AI faces criminal heat for ignoring EU data fines

Re: Sounds like

Not in the way the EU would claim in any extraditition request. They can't even enforce their fines. It's pretty clear they have zero jurisdiction.

Re: Sounds like

They can but it's got a snow ball's chance in hell.

Trump already doesn't like EU regs and I believe the State Department can just say no.

Also scraping the public internet is not Illegal where Clearview is. If you're not a multinational the GDPR is meaningless.

CISA exec blames nation-state hackers and Democrats for putting America's critical systems at risk

There were also the loses during the Doge/Musk chaos and Trump pulling staff to help with immigration paper work. Republicans don't actually care about CISA functioning, it's just a chance to try and blame yet another thing on democrats.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-08/homeland-security-cyber-personnel-reassigned-to-jobs-in-trump-s-deportation-push?embedded-checkout=true

Clearview AI sees red as UK tribunal sides with regulator over $10M GDPR fine

That's true, but are they trying? The UK government appears to be do it themselves with age verification, a digital ID card, and real time face recognition.

Oh well. Sorry for the double post

If they're truly not in the UK or the EU I don't even know why they're bothering to appeal. Foregin administrative fines are unenforcable in the U.S.

France's CNIL tried this several years ago and the Dutch last year, and as far as I can tell haven't gotten anywhere.

Microsoft cuts off Azure phone surveillance support for Israeli military

Not for mass survellience, could have fooled me. Windows 11 is spyware. Also sliently turning on cloud sync for people's file and browsing with an update. We all know you'll had it over in heart beat when the feds come knocking. Lets not forget Recall, an AI powered screen logger.

These don't sound like actions of a company with objections to mass survellience.

FTC chair accuses Google of treating GOP's emails as spam

They get filtered cause people mark them as spam, and the GOP emails look like spam. They even use the same dark patterns like Trump's "money bomb", which amounts to obscuring the fact donations are recurring by default. Last time they made this complain I believe part of the problem was the configuration of their mail servers, specifically a lack of email authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC).

Every question you ask, every comment you make, I'll be recording you

I'd suggest Docker, and install model runner and download one of the open models. At least your not feeding the beast(s).

China says US spies exploited Microsoft Exchange zero-day to steal military info

Oh no! Anyway. As if they don't do the same sort of thing.

Google's unloved plan to fix web permissions gathers support

I don't care how they do it as long as there is a never option. I've yet to find a site I'd like to give access to.

Signal shuts the blinds on Microsoft Recall with the power of DRM

Re: Delete Recall

Isn't what enterprise is for? They usually give their large business customers more control.

The 'End of 10' is nigh, but don't bury your PC just yet

There is also Krita for digital painting.

There is photogimp that tries to make Gimp's workflow closer to photoshop.

UK Ministry of Defence is spending less with US biz, and more with Europeans

Re: Protection comes with business

MAGA sees government support for anyone except billionaires as leeching. They don't even like helping their own voters unless they're of the donor class who can spend $100,000 on a Trump dinner.

Spending almost a trillion on our military is insane anyway.

CISA mutes own website, shifts routine cyber alerts to Musk’s X, RSS, email

It just flat our corruption. It like Trump having the secret service rent the golf carts etc from him while he stayed at Mar-a-lago during his first term.

20% discount offer on Windows 365 expires around same time as Windows 10 support

Re: A tempting deal

Yep, if you're not glued to Windows for some reason it's worth a try. Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and Pop OS and their variants are very user friendly.

I've been using Mint for around 2 years.

FBI steps in amid rash of politically charged swattings

Yeah, and they're both very dangerous because of the tactics police like to use. Swatters know this and that's why they do it. Some like no knock midnight raids in an armed country with trigger happy cops seem almost designed to escalate.

Between swatting and wrong house raids, there is a common element that results in innocent people being terrorized. Of course no recommendation how cops could be better. Just obligations on the public.

Trump admin freaks out over mere suggestion Amazon was going to show tariff impact on prices

Re: Childish

"The other thing that needs to be factored is the previous administration was destroying the US on purpose. They wanted to end American dominance and success. No one with good intent runs up such debts, weaponises the reserve currency, has open borders, promotes people on colour or sexual orientation, ignores sex and child traffiking, promotes colour revolutions around the world to suppress nations from developing and suppresses free speech."

Every criticism a confession. How is tariff chaos with our largest trading partners, slashing research budgets, and questioning our commitments to our allies among other things helping American dominace?

Trump and Elon are gutting the federal government, including the IRS, so they can give a tax cut to billionaires that will add 5 trillion to the debt. It's estimated that diminished enforcement could cost billions in tax revenue.

As for free speech, Trump's FCC is literally threatening journalist for their coverage of him. His press secretary has threated judges with arrest, including the Supreme Court. His immigrating czar has threaten AOC for informing people of their rights. It's been suggested telling people they have rights is aiding abetting a terrorist group.

EU gives staff 'burner phones, laptops' for US visits

Re: sexual abuser

Apparrently New York had a weirdly narrow definition of rape, limiting it penile penetration of the vagina. As a result of the case was broadened to include nonconsensusal oral, anal, and gential contact which is consistant with how it's defined federally and in other states.

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-rape-law-governor-hochul-50e5f9d35b1a7e26881db616a787b45a

EU lands 25% counter tariff punch on US, Trump pauses broad import levy hike – China excepted

Apparently the whole thing is a giant reverse pump and dump. Naked corruption, nothing less from mango mussolini.

Windows 11 poised to beat 10, mostly because it has to

Nice, I had to use the custom Linux-Surface kernel to get my Surface Pro 4 touch screen to work under Mint 20. I might have to upgrade it to Mint 22

OpenAI asks Uncle Sam to let it scrape everything, stop other countries complaining

Re: Hi ! We want to steal everything...

That works for multinationals like Open AI etc and that's about it.

DoorDash sued for allegedly branding customer a fraudster after delivery photo query

Okay, just don't use them, they're clearly pretty sh*t. Send someone to pick up the carry out, it's cheaper and you can take turns. That's how it was done before the pandemic and these delivery services.

Mozilla pleads with Uncle Sam to not turn off that sweet, sweet Google search money

Look no further than executive pay, Mozilla fellowship grants, AI, and Mozilla Technology Fund ( which I believe includes at least some of their AI stuff).

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/open-source-AI-for-environmental-justice/

So … Russia no longer a cyber threat to America?

Re: New World Order

Do it, this rhetoric was brought out the last time the orange idiot was in office...then Biden got elected. To be fair Europe has been encourage to spend more, it only took Crimea to light a fire under some political butts and now a full scale invasion. I am sure European defense contractors would love a steady stream of procurement contracts.

Trump teases 25% semiconductor tariffs that will go ‘substantially higher’

This is the same guy who used the Defense Production Act to accelerate vaccine production during COVID only to support anti-vax quackery like bleach and ivermectin as "cures" and the whole anti-mask thing.

Par for the course with the scatter brained orange buffoon.

Guess who left a database wide open, exposing chat logs, API keys, and more? Yup, DeepSeek

"The biz also upset OpenAI in more ways than one; the US lab famous for scraping the internet for training data believes DeepSeek used OpenAI's GPT models to produce material to train DeepSeek's neural networks."

No honor among thieves.

Trump eyes up to 100% tariffs on foreign semiconductors, TSMC in crosshairs

Re: Broken clock, right twice a day?

So you get an American pharmaceutical manufacturer, same sky high drug prices, and more pollution to make you sick...Lowering living standards to make drug companies more money what a great deal./s

What happens when we can’t just build bigger AI datacenters anymore?

The plateau can't come soon enough cause I can't wait for the AI hype to die and the bubble to pop. With any luck it will take some executives down with it.

Linux Mint 22.1 Xia arrives fashionably late

"Generally, I consider people who opt for Mint to be close to mental deficiency. In my experience, Mint only adds bugs to Ubuntu."

That says about all anyone needs to know. You're a fan boy far too concerned what others run. Clearly people run Mint cause it works for them, same with Kubuntu, or Arch etc

Ultimately it's all Linux under the hood and if you have the knowledge you can customize it to your hearts content.

Europe hopes Trump trumps Biden's plan for US to play AI gatekeeper

Sure, if you want to ignore intellectual property. If we're going down that route why not just build ASML UV lithography knock offs in the U.S. as well.

AI data centers just mean higher power bills anyway.

There is no data sharing agreement, well not one that will survive a challenge. There is no political will in congress or the whitehouse to reform the NSA much less form a court able to review data collected for EU citizens.

Re: No limit for the Netherlands but for EU?

My guess would be restrictions on previously unrestricted countries if they don't pay attention to who they sell to. Other guess it's going to suck being AI startup... well if you want Nvidia, AMD, Intel(I guess) AI chips.

yeah, I meant members too close to China. Probably should have included that.

It's not just Big Tech: The UK's Online Safety Act applies across the board

Unless they have some connection to the UK outside of some users or they have similar laws in their home country they're probably not going to bother. The trend is saying your law applies globally, in practice that's not the case unless you're multinational. The UK government will probably end up having to block them if they don't comply.

They tried to pass a similar law in California with the backing of Baroness Kidron and it got struck down. So Ofcom can sit and spin here when it comes to small forums.

Brit watchdog probes Google's search, ads empire

I switched to Duckduckgo after they rolled out that AI nonsense. It's pretty clear ads not quality results are their focus.