Posts by Dinanziame

Google Cloud misses revenue estimates – and it's your fault, wanting smaller bills

Re: Meh

why would they need to create a whole new sub-service for "short" videos

There is no minimum length on YouTube videos. The Shorts service is more about giving users a different way to watch videos (short video repeats automatically until you swipe to the next one). I understand that video creators can choose whether their video should show up on Shorts, but only if the video is less than a minute long. As to why they've created a "whole new sub-service" to watch videos in a slightly different way, that's because they've noticed a lot of users thought it was more enjoyable to watch videos in that way. From the numbers, it seems they were right.

When is a privacy button not a privacy button? When Google runs it, claims lawsuit

As far as I can tell, WAA is this:

https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?hl=en-GB&utm_source=google-account&utm_medium=web

and this is what Google uses for personalizing your searches. If I understand correctly, the claim is that this Firebase thing which is used for Google Analytics is storing the same data even if you turn WAA off. Definitely Firebase would be storing some data, but I suppose Google's viewpoint is that they are not actually storing the same data and it's fine to store some data for analytics because users accept it in a different place (maybe with a message like "send analytics data to Google to help it make improvements to tools" or something). The lawsuit's viewpoint is that Google should have a master switch which prevents Google from storing any data whatsoever no matter where and how the user accepted it, including analytics data.

Japan to probe Google over 'suspicion' that antitrust laws are being broken

Google in particular does seem to be irrevocably unamendable. They evidently don't care one jot about being caught out engaging in "anti-trust" activities. If they did care one would imagine that, having suffered the public shame of one fine they'd work hard across their entire company to ensure that they weren't crossing the line anywhere else. But no. They're just sat there, waiting for regulators around the world to eventually get round to another part of their business.

To be fair, it has taken more than twelve years for Japan to write a law that might make illegal what they are doing; and every fine from the EU comes after years of examining the business practices to figure out if yes or no this is breaching antitrust laws. The US is only now waking up, and it's not even clear they will find Google is doing anything wrong. What they do would probably be completely fine it was a smaller company doing it, and indeed with DSA and DMA the EU has simplified the matter by declaring new regulations that only apply to mega-corporations, which is pretty much a first. It's not very surprising if Google thought all these years ago that what they were doing was fine — If they hadn't become so successful since then, it still would be.

Google - yes, that Google - testing proxy scheme to hide IP addresses for privacy

Re: Pardon my lack of trust

Google has form on that, they also push stuff like DNS-over-HTTPS that makes it harder for anybody else to track you as well as they do. It's about who gets to "own" the user.

Bad Vibrations: Music publishers sue Anthropic AI for using copyrighted lyrics

Giving back lyrics with proper attribution might be fine, after all that's what Google without crumbling under copyright lawsuits (I'm aware they have deep pockets for lawyers). Claiming credit for it is clearly not ok though.

Governments resent their dependence on Big Tech

Re: Well they could have all used Linux, but most didn't.

I do have a problem with my government going back to paper-based technology. I haven't filled a paper-based tax return in over ten years, and I don't intend to ever do it again.

One door opens, another one closes, and this one kills a mainframe

Re: You're not supposed to open all the cabinets at once

Which is why many filing cabinets have a mechansim that prevents you from opening two drawers at the same time.

EU threatens X with DSA penalties over spread of Israel-Hamas disinformation

Re: Disinformation is rife

It's a war, so the first casualty is truth. Each side have an obvious incentive to report/invent crimes perpetrated by the other side. They probably don't need to invent much though.

US Navy sailor admits selling secret military blueprints to China for $15K

Only??

I'd have thought you need at least two more zeroes to convince somebody to take such risks.

Twitter further restricts free tier with option to limit replies to verified accounts

Re: "Musk’s changes at X are aimed at making money"

No, the value includes the debt. So Twitter might be worth 21B if it did not have that debt.

Ransomwared health insurer wasn't using antivirus software

I can relate

My father asked me what he should do about Norton complaining that he should update his credit card details so they can keep charging him, I told him he should never give them a cent anymore.

Google pays Apple $18B to $20B a year to keep its search in iPhone

Re: Google could save money while Microsoft loses pride

I think the estimates might be faulty. In the one known case where the default search engine is Bing, Windows for desktop, Bing has only 10% market share and Google about 90%. It's likely that the same would happen on iOS, meaning that if Google was not the default search engine, they would lose only a fraction of the ad revenue.

AI girlfriend encouraged man to attempt crossbow assassination of Queen

Re: " Queen of England "

Lizzie, then.

Acting union calls out Hollywood studios for 'double standard' on AI use

Re: Finally, someone makes a good reply to the status quo

But the answer is easy: the individuals signed away their intellectual property. It's probably a standard clause in acting contracts that the studio may use the results of the takes in whatever way they want in perpetuity.

Amazon, Microsoft under UK regulator's eye as cloud market probe confirmed

Google must feel left out

Big Brother is coming to a workplace near you, and the privacy regulator wants a word

Re: "or offsite [...]outside work hours.

I watch a lot of porn with my work supplied service — nobody has complained so far...

Fabricati diem, pvnc

Watermarking AI images to fight misinfo and deepfakes may be pretty pointless

Re: A stupid idea

I think it's a bit negative. In the very least, it should be possible to prove in some cases that the image was AI generated by specific systems. I'm unconvinced by this claim of the authors that they can modify an innocent image to make it seem AI generated. It seems easy enough for watermarks to be cryptographically signed.

Microsoft CEO whinges about Google's default search deals

There's a lot of contradictions here

First, how is it fine for Bing to be the default search engine on the default browser for Windows, but not for Google to be the default search engine on the default browser for iOS?

Second, how is it that whichever search engine Apple chooses as default is the winner, when the default search engine for Windows (again, Bing) has less than 10% market share on the Desktop?

Fuming Tom Hanks says he had nothing to do with that AI dental ad clone of him

I think the question was, why clone the face of an existing person when they could just generate a fake face from scratch and pay nobody at all.

And the answer is: fake faces are ultimately generated from pieces of somebody's face, and this is tricky from a copyright and legal point of view. If you clone a person's face with the right contract, you are protected from legal issues, and the additional cost is trivial.

PhD student guilty of 3D-printing 'kamikaze' drone for Islamic State terrorists

Re: Looks like something a 10 year old designed!

See "cybertruck"

If the Linux Foundation was a software company, it'd be the biggest in the world

Re: Wrong

Yet Android, which as close to a company product it can be, is the most popular mobile OS, based on Linux, obsolete and all...

The only way is WebKit: Vivaldi's browser arrives on iOS

Re: Can anyone tell me why ...

Security and user safety, or preventing competition from better browsers... depending who you ask.

Twitter, aka X, tops charts for misinformation, EU official says

Re: Well, as long as the IPCC and their syncophants have accounts

Fantasia has you covered

After the hippos, before the crocodiles.

Why can't datacenter operators stop thinking about atomic power?

Re: "Three words: Cheap, reliable, power"

Without even mentioning that the coal-powered power plants used by Germany release way more radioactivity in the atmosphere than nuclear power plants.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste

No joke: Cloudflare takes aim at Google Fonts with ROFL

Re: An idea

Note that the EU has declared that it is mandatory to self host Google Fonts on your website, otherwise user data leaks to Google:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_fonts_gdpr/

Google killing Basic HTML version of Gmail In January 2024

Re: What happend to...

That's nothing! I only read documents printed using dot matrix! But I make an exception for spirit duplicator.

The iPhone 15 has a Goldilocks issue: Too big or too small. Maybe a case will make it just right

Re: Phones are lovely but they'd be much better without cameras

I think "cheaper" is the issue here. Not so much actually cheaper than "looks cheaper". Apple sells luxury, they can't exactly make it look cheap.

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

Wow. Do you also go on random forums about star wars and periodically remind them that it's just fantasy stories that didn't actually happen?

Uncle Sam names three Amazon execs as Prime suspects in subscription ripoff case

I remember that when signing up on the Kindle App for Android, you eventually got a screen showing "Amazon Prime free trial" and a single OK button. If you tapped the button you were signed on with automatic paid renewal. There was no way to refuse other than force closing the app.

Google on trial: Feds challenge deals that set your web search defaults

Re: Default search engine

The proper solution would be to force Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc to require people to opt-in to be tracked, never opt-out.

I'm pretty sure that's already the case in EU with the GDPR. If you open an incognito window and try a Google Search, the first thing that you see is a banner asking you to accept or reject cookies.

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Re: My own experience ...

You shouldn't compare the market cap of a company against a country's GDP. The market cap is total value, the GDP is yearly production. It would be more correct to compare the country's GDP against the company's yearly revenue ($60B for Google).

Re: Process failure at Google

It's pretty surprising, because Google Maps does have a UI to report issues with the map data, and as far as I heard they do react and fix issues — they even regularly mark roads around my place as closed for temporary events like marathons and the like.

Maybe they reported the bridge collapse by sending a letter to "Google, California"?

The road is still there on Google Maps even now:

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7816226,-81.2829091,3a,75y,219.98h,62.97t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sgmKlW68IxhxRlu9SkSQCPQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu

The Street View data is all the way back from 2012, so it still shows the road, even though the 3D view does show the bridge is collapsed:

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7813855,-81.2835562,84a,35y,62.65h,34.08t/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

Amazon unleashes Gen AI for product descriptions, curbs it for Kindle

Re: Amazon has offered product from brands called CARWORNIC and TBMPOY

Relevant article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html

Google promises eternity of updates for Chromebooks – that's a decade for everyone else

Re: Probably smart move

In most Chromebooks, often used in US schools, the hardware will fail way before 10 years are over.

US Department of Justice claims Google bought its way to web search dominance

Microsoft would know

The majority of desktops run Windows, where Edge is the default browser, and Bing the default search engine. And Edge has 5% of market share, and Bing has 3% of market share. Apple is more successful with Safari, a respectable share of their users keep the default browser. Not sure whether the difference comes from quality or brand loyalty, but the numbers don't lie.

Lightning struck: Apple switches to USB-C for iPhone 15 lineup

Re: "can reach out for help when there's no cell signal coverage over satellite connections"

I'm surprised by the tie-in. Is the service unavailable outside the US? If it's available outside of the US, why was the tie-in even necessary?

Microsoft Edge still forcing itself on users in Europe

Re: The browser wars continue

They're definitely short of cash, they didn't give their employees a raise this year... Yeah ha ha no. They had record profits this year. I truly don't know why Edge is so unsuccessful. Even if Chrome's popularity is due to its connections with Google products, Safari has more users on the desktop, even though Windows computers still vastly outnumber OSX, and come with Edge as default.

Re: Why isn't this an Anti-Trust Issue?

I think it's essentially because now they are not market leader anymore, unlike in the 90s. If the market leader makes it hard to move to the competition, it's an anti-trust issue. If the 5% market share holder does the same thing, it's a big shrug. There's not too much point in enforcing monopolistic behavior that is not even successful.

Google thinks $20M ought to be enough to figure out how or if AI can be used responsibly

Re: Do No Evil

Not quite — it was "Don't be evil".

It might feel like nitpicking, but I think "Do no evil" would have been a ridiculous motto, which brings to mind a hermit living in the desert, while "Don't be evil" is a reasonable goal. Of course, at the time they pretty much meant "Don't be Microsoft", and... yeah...

IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week

Re: Why do people assume it is only upper management that supports back to office?

Er, because the workers who wanted back to the office are already there?

The point is not just working from the office, the point is working at the same place as the others, so you can talk to them face to face. For that, everybody must be in the office. People working from home probably consider that not being interrupted by random people coming to their desk to ask questions is a great advantage of working from home. But all the people who used to ask these questions are now really annoyed that they can't do that anymore.

In fact, having half the people in the team working from home is the worst, because you need to handle separately the communications to both groups, so it's pretty guaranteed that some of the info gets lost: "we talked about it" "no we didn't" "yes, we discussed it in the break room" "well how was I to know since I work from home" etc.

Apple races to patch the latest zero-day iPhone exploit

Re: The intentionally incompatible iMessage yet again?

Apple makes great hardware — software, not so much.

Texas cryptomining outfit earns more from idling rigs than digging Bitcoin

Essentially trading on the energy market, securing long-term contracts at low cost and reselling when prices are high.

AI to replace 2.4 million jobs in the US by 2030, many fewer than other forms of automation

Forrester’s analysts reckon that workers in more creative industries, like editors, writers, authors and poets, and lyricists, are more likely to incorporate generative AI tools in their jobs and are less likely to be replaced.

I think that's breathtakingly naive. The point is that generative AI lowers the bar so much that anybody with half a brain can create content that can pass if you squint. Maybe true art will always be superior, but it's going to be overrun by an ocean of generated crap. The same happened to professional photographers when quality digital cameras became widespread. It used to be photography was expensive and it would take hours of development to know whether a shot was good. That's why you needed professionals who knew what they were doing, and got paid well. Nowadays anybody with a phone can take dozens of pictures in a minute, fix issues with a couple of filters and upload them to Getty. Most of that is crap, but there's so much of it that you can find a reasonably good image for cheap, so professionals cannot earn a living wage anymore.

Searches for "professional photographer" have decreased 60% over the past 20 years

US AGs: We need law to purge the web of AI-drawn child sex abuse material

Re: Not sure I agree with the reasoning here...

Secondly, in most jurisdictions it's already illegal to have or distribute child porn

Well, no — Not if it's a cartoon. The reason child porn movies are illegal is that real children must be hurt to produce it. Producing a cartoon does not hurt children, so child porn cartoons are legal in most countries (with the notable exception of UK and Australia). This has been so far an acceptable situation, considering the fact that cartoons are obviously different from reality. But with AI, it will be possible to create photorealistic child porn without hurting children, and the goal of the new law is to make this content illegal all the same.

Google settles another Play Store antitrust case

Surprising

When the litigant is private, a relatively small sum of money is often enough to convince them to settle, but I wouldn't have thought such a method would work on AGs. Maybe they got something else in return? A promise to be careful? A wag of the finger?

Google rebrands 'android' as 'Android' to remove any doubt about its affiliations

Re: Logos

Rebranding is like makeup: If it's well done you don't notice it... Which doesn't mean it has no effect. The fact is that people do react differently to subtle differences that they often don't notice. You don't really pay attention while walking past a shop whether it was painted one year ago or ten years ago, but it still has an influence on how you see the business, and whether you are likely to buy from it.

Of course, sometimes rebranding are complete shitshows and destroy the product. That happens too :)

Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history

Re: Typically Tropical Topical Topics

Figuring out what a website is about is practically the entire business model of Google Search. You can try to mislead them with SEO and the like, but they have a lot of experience doing it, and they might well push down your results to hell (aka "page 2").

It's like suing a law firm. You can get away with it, but you better know what you're doing.

Re: Some questions

I think Google has the same privacy rules in EEA + UK + CH. IIRC they also treat those countries the same for GDPR and right to be forgotten, regardless of legal requirements.

Re: Hey, Google ...

Dream the impossible dream

"YMMV, based on were you are"? Doesn't make sense