Posts by Dinanziame

Microsoft launches full-court press to save $69B Activision deal

Re: Everything Microsoft touches dies

Minecraft is still successful though, eight years later!

Using personal info for ads without consent puts Meta in EU's gunsights

Re: Who else does this apply to ?

Google does ask for your consent, for example every time you do a search in incognito mode. It used to be you needed more clicks to reject all cookies than to accept all cookies, and they got fined for that, so now it's one click for both.

Tech contractor who uses an umbrella company? UK tax is coming after them

How many IT contractors are there in the UK?

I'm asking because the subject keeps coming back so often. I think in most countries, hardly anybody works in IT as a contractor; including deregulated US.

Twitter tries to lure brands back with spend-matching scheme

Re: Twitter

I think there's a widespread attempt to enjoy as much schadenfreude as possible

Almost 300 predatory loan apps found in Google and Apple stores

Re: @trevorde - Obvious flaw here

A theft is only a crime if reported to the authorities

I was going to protest, but then I saw your username... So I've got nothing to say, carry on

Criminals use trending TikTok challenge to make data-stealing malware invisible

Scamming the dishonest

Reminds me of the YouTube videos that claimed you could steal your friends' World of Warcraft accounts by sending your own account username and password to [e-mail]

Sandworm gang launches Monster ransomware attacks on Ukraine

Illegal attack

I hate Putin, and I hope Ukraine kicks out the Russian invaders. That said, I always have to roll my eyes at statements like "Illegal attack". It's not like there are rules on when you're allowed to invade other countries. There's no such thing as international law, at best there's international peer pressure.

France says non to Office 365 and Google Workspace in school

Re: So much BS.

You can write microformats annotations in US English, and the user-visible text in UK English, so everybody is happy.

Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back

Re: Twitter “poll”

Surely Elon doesn't need an army of bots to rig a poll on his own website

IBM manager sues for $5m claiming postnatal demotion

Re: Nothing new...

At this point, I wonder who is actually trying to work for IBM

Investor tells Google: Cut costs now and stop paying staff so much

Indeed clearly Google is doing it wrong

As can be observed by the fact it is a failing and unprofitable company. Oh wait.

Amazon reportedly considers laying off 10k employees

Amazon has 1.4 million employees, but how many are in warehouses or driving trucks, and how many are tech workers? I assume the article is about 10k tech workers fired, because they probably fire 10k warehouse employees every single day.

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Re: You get what you order

I'm not sure China counts as socialist, or even communist these days. They're approaching empire from the other side.

Europe wants Airbnb and pals to cough up rental property logs

Re: Imagine if it was China asking for this information

They are required to do it, but they're not doing it. That's the point. When Airbnb has to declare them, they won't have a choice anymore.

What about income tax?

I assume making sure people who rent their flat declare it as income is also coincidentally a benefit for governments...

UK government set to extract hospital data to Palantir system without patient consent

Re: pseudonymization

You should do that twice, for even more anonymity!

Google cut contractors off from online 'Share My Salary' spreadsheet, union claims

I assume the spreadsheet is still available to employees, just not contractors

Google settles with Uncle Sam over data that vanished during cryptocurrency biz probe

Re: "That data was lost before the case could be settled."

Since they pay multi-billion dollar fines?

Re: "That data was lost before the case could be settled."

There are also laws which force companies to delete user data on request, even the offsite backups. Even write-only cold storage is "deleted", by deleting the cryptographic key:

https://cloud.google.com/docs/security/deletion

Oracle's Larry Ellison shares fears of bankrupting Western civilization with healthcare

Re: Experience

I remember an Oracle database used by a project I was working on in the early naughties. It was replicated in five data centers, so the schema appropriately looked like a pentagram.

Musk reportedly wants to gut Twitter workforce by up to 75%

Re: Shoutld be an easy task...

Or El Daverino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing

Amazon hit with $1bn claim that secretive Buy Box algorithm screws shoppers

Re: And this is news to just about nobody?

If that sticks, i would very much like to see similar lawsuits brought up against google. bing and any other forced advertisment/"search" engine in the world.

Looks like you missed this, then:

Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe

'Fully undetectable' Windows backdoor gets detected

Not windows use here

But do people really just have to open the document and the macro runs, no questions asked?

I mean, if I open a document that pretends to be a LinkedIn offer and it asks for permission to run a macro, there's not a chance I'll allow it.

China dumps dud chips on Russia, Moscow media moans

Re: Russian SMO

Google gave a very confusing translation of this. Apparently, the word брака means both marriage and defect, so the title of the article ended up as "Marriage is growing in popularity in Russia"

YouTube loves recommending conservative vids regardless of your beliefs

Worth noting the dates

The study was from October to December 2020, which includes the day of the presidential election, and the subsequent screaming about stopping the count, voter fraud, etc. Essentially the most polarizing event in recent years.

Moon has been drifting away from Earth for 2.4 billion years, rocks reveal

It's counterintuitive, because it seems to mean the moon-earth pair is gaining potential energy. From what I understand, this is compensated by the fact the earth is rotating slower and slower (thus losing kinetic energy). Ultimately in gazillion years, the earth would revolve once every lunar month, unless the sun explodes first.

Now you can't even scale Mount Everest without a drone buzzing overhead

Looks nice

Gave me the chills. Though maybe because I thought how cold it must be up there.

Business can't make staff submit to video surveillance, says court

That's four letters — very different!

Good luck getting the money

Seems to me "CheatU" decided they didn't need a presence in the Netherlands so they wouldn't have to pay...

Google Translate dropped in mainland China

I rather wonder what is the reason for the change, considering the translation from/to Chinese still works for Taiwan and Hong Kong, or indeed anywhere else. Is there somewhere a hidden cost to keeping translate.google.cn working? Did they have to maintain a list of words to block in order to keep the answers "harmonious"? Did they find out the Chinese government was spying on the queries?

European carriers again call for Big Tech to fund network builds

Remarkable shortcut

it's quite usual for industry segments to complain that they are struggling and ask for subsidies from the government. The government also looks around for industries that are doing a bit too well and tax them more heavily. But this is cutting the middleman: "Hey, this guy is making more than me, so just give me some of his money"

Darth Vader voice actor James Earl Jones allows AI to take over the role

Yes. Yes, I did.

The post is required, and must contain letters.

Mozilla drags Microsoft, Google, Apple for obliterating any form of browser choice

Re: How about...

It has happened in the past, and in some countries it is still happening.

Florida asks Supreme Court if it's OK to ban content moderation it doesn't like

Would that apply to foreign companies?

Let's say US social media gets overrun by porn, violence and racism. There would be an opening for a foreign company — say, Chinese — to present a better alternative.

In Rust We Trust: Microsoft Azure CTO shuns C and C++

Re: "despite its reputation for being difficult to learn "

The basic fact is that programming is complicated, because having a computer doing exactly what you want is complicated. It's possible to have a programming language that is more complicated than necessary, and less safe than possible, but it's not possible to have a programming language that is truly simple, unless it wallpapers over issues like memory management that really should be solved by the programmer.

Software fees to make up 10% of John Deere's revenues by 2030

Re: Embrace, Extend, Extract

It's weird that a company is able to build a single model of tractor, and sell it with different licenses controlling the power output. If they can manage to build a powerful tractor and sell it at low price after throttling the power output with software, they don't have enough competition to drive down the prices.

FCC floats 'five-year rule' for hoovering up space junk

There's money in cleaning up space

Scrooge McDuck was on the job in 1985 already!

https://www.bedetheque.com/BD-Super-Picsou-Geant-Tome-10-Numero-10-56638.html

Meta disbands Responsible Innovation team, spreads it out over Facebook and co

Ethicists are not like lawyers

It always comes as a shock to companies that the ethicists they hire are not, in fact, always defending the viewpoint of their employers.

No, Apple, you may not sell iPhones without chargers

Re: Easy Fix

What's the problem with selling chargers on eBay? It serves the purpose of producing less chargers to help the environment.

Braking news: Cops slammed for spamming Waze to slow drivers down

Technically correct

The best kind of correct. And, really, what's the issue? That people will feel intimidated into following speed limits? ...Aren't they supposed to do that anyway...?

Japan to change laws that require use of floppy disks

Obsolete regulations are best regulations

I once saw a requirement that data had to be sent as CSV file — in two separate copies.

AI detects 20,000 hidden taxable swimming pools in France, netting €10m

Maybe just making it not blue might be enough:

https://www.google.com/search?q=kat+von+d+red+swimming+pool

Talking about "Artificial Intelligence" for an image-analysis software is a little bit far fetched, isn't it?

Image analysis has been described as artificial intelligence since forever... The fact every phone can do this today doesn't mean it was easy to do: https://xkcd.com/1425/

Germany orders Sept 1 shutdown of digital ad displays to save gas

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

─ Gas is gas, but they call it "natural gas".

─ What do they call farts?

─ I dunno, I didn't go into Burger King

How Google uses mirrors to dynamically reconfigure its networks

My mind is full of questions, but mainly I want to know why the number is 136.

Microsoft finds critical hole in operating system that for once isn't Windows

Re: "the mention of the strcpy function immediately raises red flags"

I can only assume that a lot of old, gnarly code relies on the current behavior

Vietnam demands Big Tech localize data storage and offices

When Russia did that, the not-so-subtle point was that they could threaten local employees if the company did something they didn't like, for instance during the last elections.

Not sure what's happening now that Google has been forced to shut down their office due to their bank accounts having been seized by the government.

Googlers demand abortion searches ‘never be saved or treated as a crime’

Re: Just for starters

I think I understand the mention of halal butchers and bagels and lox, but why musicals?

Google, Apple squash exploitable browser bugs

From time to time, I dreamily wonder if it would be possible to "start from scratch and do it right" and create software that doesn't keep having so many security vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, I'm sure many have tried and failed.

I vaguely remember a line that security and usability work against each other; and that if you dial security to the max, you have an unusable product, but if you dial it to zero, you still have a pretty good product like the PlayStation network.

Australian court overturns 'Google is a publisher' decision

Re: Right to be forgotten

Google apparently does not allow you to file a request unless you're from Europe:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-request?complaint_type=rtbf

Also, from what I understand, even if an EU citizen files a request and the request is accepted, this will only impact search results for queries made within Europe. Australians can still find everything.