Posts by Dinanziame

Musk torches $500B Stargate AI plan, Altman strikes back

Re: I think I'll wait

You're really not going to like it

Former Amazon exec appointed as boss of UK's competition watchdog

Former head of competition watchdog not "sufficiently focused on growth."

There are so many things you could answer to that, I have trouble which one to choose....

- Well yeah, that's his job

- "Guard dog too aggressive with burglars"

- "Politician too honest"

- "Driver not sufficiently focused on drinking alcohol"

- Clock reminds people of the passing time

What would you suggest? Let's find the best ones

Google DeepMind CEO says 2025's the year we start popping pills AI helped invent

Taking drugs designed by machines

No way this can go wrong!!

Donald Trump proposes US govt acquire half of TikTok, which thanks him and restores service

So, the US government is going to pay $20B to buy half of TikTok, or they're going to seize it? I can't imagine either happening...

Clock ticking for TikTok as US Supreme Court upholds ban

Re: Jan 21st 2025

Oh that would be even funnier than Elon Musk.

The biggest obstacle is money, though. I can't see Byte Dance accepting to sell for less than $30B.

Google reports halving code migration time with AI help

Re: Google is a failed company

...with $200M of profit per day...

Admittedly, at the size of Google they have scale problems practically nobody else has

DJI loosens flight restrictions, decides to trust operators to follow FAA rules

The apps are in the Apple Store though. I initially thought they couldn't be in the Play store due to legal restrictions, but I guess they just can't bother.

Europe coughs up €400 to punter after breaking its own GDPR data protection rules

Must have been hit by the Mispeling vyrus. Bring a carrot with you!

Tesla, Musk double down on $56B payday appeal

Re: musk doesn't deserve to exist

It's interesting to note that, since so much of Tesla's value is tied to the hallucina^W visionary ideas of Elon Musk, his sudden untimely death would literally make billions for people shorting the stock.

Hiring a random Luigi would comparatively cost a negligible amount.

Now Trump's import tariffs could raise the cost of a laptop for Americans by 68%

Re: "US bankruptcies

It appears that Harley Davidson is pretty close to going under.

To be fair, that is probably due to the fact that the average age of their customers goes up by ten years every ten years.

Offsetting tariffs with lower taxes

Clever — everybody pays more for everything, cost of living increases, but people who pay a lot of taxes actually pay less money overall. I wonder if there is anybody getting shafted here, hmmm...

Amazon worker – struck and shot in New Orleans terror attack – initially denied time off

Re: Amazon: The employer of last resort

At some point, there were reports that Amazon was running out of potential employees for their warehouses in some places. This was due to the fact they had a very high turnover and they had a policy of never hiring again somebody they had fired. I'm not sure how they solved that problem.

Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks

Meanwhile, Google has been recognizing landmarks in user pictures for a decade, and Android users apparently don't care. I understand that some people care a lot about privacy, but I have to say it's probably a vanishingly small minority.

Microsoft Edge takes a victory lap with some high-looking usage stats for 2024

I wonder how much of the increased market share is from forcing users into Edge?

Well the 11% market share quoted in the article is for desktop. There is an app for Edge in the play store, possibly also on the app store... But on mobile their market share is below 1%. So there's your answer.

UK ICO not happy with Google's plans to allow device fingerprinting

Well they're not happy because so far Google said they would enforce this on their advertisers; now Google is openly saying they won't do anything about it so the ICO will have to do it themselves.

Funnily, this was one of those anti-competitive rules that Google created in order to minimize the data that third parties could have, so that everybody would be forced to use Google's services to target the users. I'm not sure if they removed the rules because they thought they could get more money from advertisers by being nicer to them, or because they thought that they were unable to prevent it anyway, or even they were afraid that this would be counted against them in the many anti-monopoly lawsuits they are fighting. Could be all three.

Supreme Court to hear TikTok's appeal against law that would force it to shut, or sell

I think the biggest issue with Tiktok is that it can probably influence public opinion. If I remember correctly, Facebook did controlled tests which showed they could relatively easily manipulate the mood of their users depending on what they saw on their feed. In theory, it would be relatively easy to influence elections.

Technically I'm not sure that there is a law against influencing public opinion though. In the case of Tiktok it might be possible to use regulations limiting foreign influence, but if say Twitter or Facebook decided to actively manipulate users for political reasons rather than for clicking on ads, as they are US companies I don't know what would stop them.

Google Timeline location purge causes collateral damage

Re: How did they know you didn’t read the emails?

It may surprise you, but since the EU DMA regulations, Google Maps is not allowed to know what emails you read! In the first place, I doubt they would stop the change because somebody somewhere hasn't read the warning emails...

If the default had been to keep the data forever, you can bet your arse that people would have complained that by default Google is not respecting their privacy. Ah well.

I'm glad I noticed a warning about this a couple of weeks ago though. It's been sometimes useful to check which exact date I was in a place, or which exact place I visited on a certain trip. I hope they'll eventually make the backup usable on the desktop.

Android beefs up Bluetooth tag stalker protections

Re: Protections

The technology is problematic in itself. There are many corner cases and abuses possible. I'm not sure it's possible to design it so that it works when we want to and only when we want to.

There's a lot of technologies like that though, from end to end encryption to drones. Guns are sometimes useful and often used for crimes. And cars are sometimes used by criminals to escape the police.

Scumbag gets 30 years in the clink for running CSAM dark-web chatrooms, abusing kids

Punishment is a means, not a goal

Today’s sentencing is more than just a punishment. It’s a message

The way I see it, punishment is always a message. The whole reason we punish people is to deter them from doing it again, and to tell other people they shouldn't either. In the case of jail sentences, there is additionally the potential benefit of protecting the population from criminals.

Cruise shutdown blastzone increases – Microsoft takes $800M charge

Re: Who will pay?

Musk must be very pleased. All he needs to do is sink Waymo and the market is his and his alone.

Uber is already offering self-driving car rides with a Chinese company.

That said, Musk needs to have self-driving cars first in order to join the party.

Cruise robotaxis parked forever, as GM decides it can't compete and wants to cut costs

Maybe, possibly

if your shit tech makes a killing in the real world then it will be shit-canned.

Maybe. Possibly. On an unrelated note, Tesla somehow gained 5% today

Tesla sued over alleged Autopilot fail in yet another fatal accident

Re: You’re the driver, not the flaky AI

On the other hand, this adds some context to the many articles and comments regularly published that claim Teslas can already drive themselves without interventions.

US military grounds entire Osprey tiltrotor fleet over safety concerns

Re: An interesting concept

What's the big issue, though? The design does seem simple enough, and there's plenty of helicopters with tandem rotors. Is it the gyroscope effect of the rotating propellers moving from one position to another which is adding too much weird stress?

WhatsApp finally fixes View Once flaw that allowed theft of supposedly vanishing pics

Re: "Dilbert on Camera Banning"

If the strip is old enough — This one is from 2004, so it's allowed!

Facing sale or ban, TikTok tossed under national security bus by appeals court

Re: Go for SCOUTS

Would that be boy scouts, or girl scouts?

Amazon accused of cheating low-income Prime users out of two-day deliveries

As if Amazon cared about the safety of their employees and drivers

Google DeepMind touts AI model for 'better' global weather forecasting

The best way to predict the future accurately is to force it to happen

Eurocops take down 'secure' criminal chat system known as Matrix

I like the splash screen. The police probably had fun putting this together.

£1B lawsuit targets Microsoft for allegedly overcharging Windows customers on other clouds

Re: I don't think so.

Since this lawsuit is filed to a competition tribunal, I suppose it is arguing that Microsoft is engaging in monopolistic behavior — it's fine to offer discounts to your customer, but not if this effectively shuts off the competition by leveraging your dominant market share in a separate business. This is very much like Microsoft was found guilty for offering Internet Explorer for free with Windows, using the fact that almost everybody buys Windows to get a leg-up in the browser competition.

Musk and Trump to fall out in 2025, predicts analyst

Re: They will fall out over ego

I think Elon is totally able to schmooze Trump for a very long time, and Trump knows that being Elon's friend is good for his brand. But there is a bigger problem regarding "Tesla's ability to execute on full self-driving vehicles" — Elon has promised the cybercab for 2027, meaning it definitely won't be ready by the end of Trump's term in 2029.

Musk seeks injunction to stop OpenAI morphing into for-profit company

Re: Elmo starts to sound more and more like a...

He's probably still sore that they did not let him become CEO in 2018. But more importantly, he can't forgive them for having become successful after he left.

Microsoft informed of yet another antitrust probe by US authorities

has labelled Microsoft a participant in a "censorship cartel."

This is obvious political posturing claiming that big tech is censoring right-wing viewpoints. I wonder if Republicans are ever going to put their money where their mouth is and actually sue big tech platforms for exercising what is technically their first amendment rights. This would go straight to the supreme court, and then who knows what would happen?

Cryptocurrency policy under Trump: Lots of promises, few concrete plans

Re: "strategic Bitcoin reserves"

The only strategy is to get idiots to buy in and then sell high (or just disappear with the real money).

Well yeah? That's not intellectual masturbation at all — there's real money to be made like this. Just make sure you have a seat when the music stops.

Google earns fresh competition scrutiny from two nations on a single day

Re: The pressure is rising

I think the fact sideloading is at least possible on Android should allow Google to set some rules on what it allows on the Play Store. To take the most obvious examples, porn and racist content are certainly forbidden on the Play Store, and I don't think Google should be forced to allow them.

I wouldn't bet that the creator of a racist game would manage to force Apple to sell his game on the App Store either, but maybe the Supreme Court would have interesting ideas on whose first amendment rights prevail.

Google must face £7B UK class action over search engine dominance

Re: Really?

So ads were more expensive, caused high costs to companies, which said companies passed on to consumers. By the same logic, Apple received $billions, made a ton of money, and passed the savings to the consumers by making their iProducts cheaper?

How US Dept of Justice's cure for Google could inflict collateral damage

Also think of poor Apple, which will lose 20% of its net income...

Google blocked 1,000-plus pro-China fake news websites from its search results

Re: To what end?

It seems that US elections often hang on a relatively small percentage of voters in a small number of states. You can imagine that with a relatively small effort you could change the results, and have an absolutely disproportionate impact. If you consider the amount of money that is poured every day into advertising for much smaller stakes, it does make sense.

Why Google's Chrome monopoly won't crack anytime soon

Re: Selling Chrome is just a part of forcing Google to share it's trove of PI

Note that the EU's DMA 6(11) regulations already force Google to let third-parties access query and click data:

The gatekeeper shall provide to any third-party undertaking providing online search engines, at its request, with access on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms to ranking, query, click and view data in relation to free and paid search generated by end users on its online search engines. Any such query, click and view data that constitutes personal data shall be anonymised.

Not sure what Google considers is fair and reasonable, or whether anybody has even tried buying it. Not sure what they consider anonymised.

Re: Horror scenario

Google says a programmer with a degree can expect around $75K/year.

Programmers who work at Google normally get double this when hired, and double that again when they have 7-8 years of experience.

Re: Maybe focus on the root cause ?

no more advertising and all this shite just goes away

And a good chunk of the internet with it. The only news sites would be behind paywalls, and I guess Bing would be the only search engine left, as it is the only one owned by a company that does not derive most of its revenue through ads.

Europe glances Russia's way after Baltic Sea data cables severed

...Or it could be a fishing trawler

It would not be the first time.

Trump appoints Musk associate Brendan Carr as FCC chair

At least it's not Ajit Pai

*shudder*

Will passkeys ever replace passwords? Can they?

Re: Count me out

The first is what is known, that is your username/email

This is silly. The email is publicly known; anybody can know it so it can't be used for authentication. And touching the key works for keys; when a passkey is stored in your laptop there is no presence requirement and the laptop can be hacked from anywhere. Some laptops have equivalent hardware that can only be activated physically but it's not the norm.

Count me out

I see the point of having two-factor authentication — having a yubikey, or a couple of yubikeys for different devices, on top of using a password. That's the two-factor part. More factors, more security: Now, instead of just having the password, I also need to have a yubikey. But replacing the password with a passkey stored on a phone or a laptop, that's a different story. Not only it means that if I lose the device or it is stolen, the thief can do whatever they want. What's even worse is that the device containing the passkey can get hacked.

Google decides Europe's political ad rules are too hard to implement at scale

Re: Not a great ad for their "AI" offering is it ?

Even if AI is correct 99% of the time, that's not good enough when the remaining 1% results in a billion-dollars fine. Good enough to answer users though...

Re: Are google really saying

At least DDG is up front about it though, they do state that amazon pays them to put amazon links up top.

Really? You mean they have ads, or you mean top of search results?

Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf

Re: Bold move

But intentionally deleting automatic backups is probably the boldest move i've heard of yet!

I don't think these really count as backups, but whenever you modify and save a file in emacs, it saves a copy of the previous version in a file of the same name with a "~" suffix. So you end up with a lot of files called input.txt~, code.cc~, index.html~ and the like, which tend to clutter your directory. It's not a big deal, but it tends to be forgotten with time, so I see now that I still have in my home directory a file called blo~ created in June 2023.

I don't really rely on this feature, though it must have happened a couple of times in the past 29 years that I was useful. But at some point I was sufficiently annoyed that I created an alias to delete all of them more safely than typing "rm *~" with three paranoid checks that I don't have a space in the middle.

EU irate about geo-locked Apple IDs

Re: So for stuff like football rights

Are they the same across the entire EU, so you don't pay more for a subscription to watch Italian football if you live in Italy than if you live in Estonia? Or is as I guess it is, and you do pay more if you live in Italy?

The prices can be different in different countries, but if you buy a subscription from your home country, you must be able to watch it from anywhere in EU. The rights owners cannot block you using geolocation. You are expected to buy a subscription from your home country, and companies are allowed to check where you live... But they don't have to. A company in Estonia does not have to check that you are living in Estonia.