Posts by v13

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

Horror scenario

Imagine for a moment Microsoft owning Chrome. The horror of Christmas past. The path to the end of the opensource Chromium.

That's not fiction. Microsoft is the only company with enough money and a search engine, that can be used to fund the billions per year needed to develop Chrome.

I've lived through the 90s and 00s and seen the impact of Internet Explorer, actively preventing the success of any operating system other than Windows.

No, thanks. I strongly prefer the most popular web engine to be opensource and Microsoft isn't the one to do it, as they never did.

Linus Torvalds declares war on the passive voice

Re: A sense of priorities

Also, Linus isn't entirely unhappy that an init system uses many of the Linux features they've been adding all these years. Systemd uses all sorts of cool Linux stuff while sysvinit just runs scripts.

Google sued for using trademarked Gemini name for AI service

> Google's proposed use of the name is confusingly similar to multiple other registered marks, Gemini Institutional, Gemini Clearing, Gemini Gemini Data, Gemini, and My Gemini.

All of them are confusingly similar to each other.

Big Music reprises classic hit 'ISPs need to stop their customers torrenting or we'll sue'

Re: Did they actually look at what was being torrented?

The way it works is that they download music over torrents and then log the IPs that served it. So yeah, they know the exact song.

Windows: Insecure by design

Same page

I'm on exactly the same page. Long term Linux desktop user, can't stand Windows. Mostly Debian. I've been using Linux for everything and today it is better than ever.

One thing that I am experimenting lately with is ChromeOS with Lacros for a laptop. The part that I like is that the Linux VMs open graphical windows on the host, so not only text works but also UIs. Firefox, KeepassX, konsole, all just work. The result is a Debian VM that has very similar functionality as my Debian desktop. The only thing that I miss are the keyboard shortcuts of kwin.

It requires you to be comfortable with using Chrome though. The underlying OS is Linux based and Lacros is so isolated that even the OS cannot enforce policies on Chrome profiles. But the host is still based on Chrome.

Apple tells emulator developers it's OK with retro games – not entire OSes

Re: Content outside their designated container area

*unless you are safari, in which case you can do whatever you like.

Y Combinator, startups funnily enough aren't fans of draft California AI safety law

Why development?

Why in earth would you regulate the development of new software technologies? How the f. will opensource comply? We don't need another DMCA law.

Things can be used for good and for bad. Just regulate how they are used, not their development.

'Building AI co-workers going to be largest opportunity of tech in our lifetime'

Mostly correct

I use LLMs for software coding assist and for processing and transforming chunks of text. They don't invalidate my job but they do make me more efficient. A 5% efficiency boost at a scale of 100.000 people means approximately 5000 fewer employees needed in order to achieve the same result. This isn't any different than a good IDE, faster compilation times, automated bug catching, and better tooling in general. The only difference is that it is happening across all fields at the same time, and that it has bigger impact on creative professions (in aggregate).

Microsoft could be about to write a fat check to stave off cloud antitrust complaint

The new Oracle

Microsoft is the new Oracle. Making money from strict and potentially anti-competitive licenses that limit what competitors can offer and how users can use their products. They prohibit users from running normal Windows in VMs, then introduce disproportionally high licensing costs for Windows Server Datacenter edition which is allowed to run in a VM.

(And Apple is the new Microsoft, making money from a tightly closed ecosystem)

Google offers DoJ cash to eliminate jury in web ad monopoly abuse trial

Re: Legalized Bribery

Just to be clear, this is about ads. Not search, not browser, not Android, but ads. And for an amount that's less than the cost of layers.

But your point is true IMO, regardless.

Apple says if you want to ship your own iOS browser engine in EU, you need to be there

Oh Apple!

Oh Apple, you silly goose. With your shenanigans and your fat bottom line. Look at you. Living like there's no tomorrow. Being malicious and schizophrenic. Allowing other browsers on one of your OSes but not the other. Claiming insecurity for restricting them but also claiming security on the OS that you don't.

Ate you alright? You don't make much sense lately.

Even more than that, you can get a very secure Android experience by joining the Advanced Protection Program which limits most of these things in order to protect the account. And that's optional and opt-in.

That's total BS. Apple allows other browser engines on Macs. What is it? Are Macs dangerous and unsafe? Or are iPhones needlessly restricting other browsers purely for profit?

Apple's 'incredibly private' Safari is not so private in Europe

Until taboola creates an app store

MPs ask: Why is it so freakin' hard to get AI giants to pay copyright holders?

Re: Begging the question

This is already covered by copyright law. If you use any tool, AI or not, to create derivative work then that's already covered.

Licensing and copyright have existing and extensive legislation in place.

Microsoft hiring Inflection team triggers interest from EU's antitrust chief

Of course

Why buy startup when me can buy developers?

- Microsoft

WTF?

- Everyone else

Google bakes new cookie strategy that will leave crooks with a bad taste

Re: Seriously, author?

This is a good explanation but tying e2e credentials to TLS isn't something that would work on the modern Internet. It'd require the Application layer and HTTP to have information from and interact with the TLS session. That would make all cloud-based load balancers that terminate TLS (most of the Internet nowadays) incompatible. It also gets tricky to handle mid-session where the session cookie is actually being created or destroyed.

Overall, binding cookies to a device is certainly the way to go. Even without a TPM, having a device-specific storage (like a service in Linux running as a different user) would be a big leap. And for the cases where you can't trust the local system, you'll need a TPM-like solution.

Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

Re: I wouldn't mind reasonable ads

Chrome's privacy sandbox is supposed to do personalization without tracking. There's obviously a form of tracking but it is done by the browser.

Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

The rendering and JavaScript engines are opensource. It doesn't get better than that. Of course two opensource options are better than one, but Chrome's opensource engine is much better than Safari's proprietary engine. V

When in doubt always prefer the opensource option.

Apple may have made itself a target before the EU's Digital Markets Act comes into force

I hope so

Apple silently stayed on the side while the EU has been busy investigating Google. The end result is that they created the closest ecosystem ever of that size.

Their devices only work with themselves and the 1 billion users they have are unable to use a different browser engine, a different payment method, a different store, even a different charger. It is the greatest vendor lock in in the history of humankind. It's time things change a bit.

Chrome engine devs experiment with automatic browser micropayments

Re: Good luck

Netflix 1080p costs £11. You need to pay £18 for 4K. Or pay Netflix £5 to get ads.

YouTube's pricing is better than Netflix's and has actually useful content.

Brit watchdog thinks Google's tweaked Privacy Sandbox still isn't cricket

Re: Still a stupid idea

How do you deal with the lack of cookies in other browsers? Are you fingerprinting the traffic?

Cloudflare defends firing of staffer for reasons HR could not explain

Re: Cold, calculated and heartless

But not as much FUD as humans obviously.

Mozilla CEO pockets a packet, asks biz to pick up pace the 'Mozilla way'

Re: "Backed by the non-profit that puts people first"

> sponsored content in the New Tab page

This is pronounced "ads".

Google hopes to end tsunami of data dragnet warrants with Location History shakeup

Re: If you are up to no good or just protesting

Unless you don't get your two phones next to each other, they'll be able to know that the two lived together for a bit. Correlating account ownership is fairly easy over a period of time.

Britain proposes 'super-complaints' to help keep the internet safe

Right...

So this is meant to be used by Nazis but not privacy advocates.

Google dragged to UK watchdog over Chrome's upcoming IP address cloaking

Re: B0ll0cks!

That's fundamentally wrong. Analytics doesn't care about the user's IP which is already pointless because of Carrier Grade NAT. It's only the approximate location that's important and that can't be hidden because of legal implications, because the sites need to be able to know the country of the user.

I'm getting a bit annoyed with the whole "protect the children" excuse for government-mandated privacy busting in the UK.

Too late. This already happens with carrier grade NAT. It's the ISPs that won't be able to spy any more.

Apple slams Android as a 'massive tracking device' in internal slides revealed in Google antitrust battle

Re: Pot... Kettle...

> Apple is not a gatekeeper to the Internet

Wait, what? You can't browse the Internet on an iPhone without using Apple's browser and they make sure not to allow any competition. They force you to use their store where ads is one of their biggest money maker, and they have absolutely no interpretability with any other OS. They hold users hostages to their ecosystem and they sell access to them to the highest bidder for $20B per year.

Who in their right mind would prefer to use Bing?

In quest to defeat Euro red-tape, Apple said it had three Safari browsers – not one

Heh

> This strategy appears not to have been very effective. Apple's pushback has only managed to get the European Commission to further investigate [...] iPadOS and iMessage

This made me chuckle.

Alphabet CEO testifies in Google Search trial: We pay billions to keep Apple at bay

So Apple...

So Apple sells access to their users to the highest bidder.

1.5 billion iPhone users, $20B/year, that's $13 per user per year.

Microsoft seeks EU Digital Market Acts exemption for underdog apps like Edge

Here we go again

Microsoft b(e)ing Microsoft. People forget what the world was like in the early 2000s when you couldn't browse the internet with Linux because Microsoft was doing shenanigans with internet explorer. And now they claim to be on the other side where they can't force enough of their users to use their fine browser and search engine. Poor them.

When Microsoft complains that you're a monopolist you know things are bad

Re: Told you so.

Well, it's not that chromium is opensource and no-thanks to Microsoft, the web is usable by non-Windows operating systems. Oh wait.

EFF urges Chrome users to get out of the Privacy Sandbox

Better than cookies

I've been using them for some time now and I very much prefer them from cookies. I have full control over them, I can disable them and I can customize them. And I need to do that once, on the browser, not on every site.

Europe wants easy default browser selection screens. Mozilla is already sounding the alarm on dirty tricks

Android 's browser selection list is in a randomised order.

Dutch consumer groups sue Google over its entire business model

Re: Illness

This is actually a real problem. The reason you're getting these is probably your ISP or your TV. People are focused on Google but forget that ISPs and Smart TVs now track traffic and use that for promoting ads. It works be interested to see which company sends you that ads.

Unfortunately the EU isn't looking that way. How many people do you think realize that their TV or their Xbox/PS are building an Ad profile for them?

South Korea 'puts the brakes' on Google's app store dominance

Re: I'm confused

I don't think that's true. Apps already coexist on Play and Samsung stores without problems. Epic has its own Android store without issues. I'm not aware of a policy that says that. Hence they "I'm confused" part.

The article isn't clear about what the problem is.

I'm confused

I can't say I understood the article. Is this another case of someone wanting to use them Play store but not pay fees? Because anyone can install a 3rd party store on Android, unlike iPhones. The app store policy is the same everywhere: Play, Apple, Samsung, Xbox, PlayStation, even Steam to some extent.

Stores take a cut, like banks take a cut on every business transaction and currency conversion. It sucks but things don't happen for free.

Google's browser security plan slammed as dangerous, terrible, DRM for websites

DRM enabled things

I fought against DRM and still don't like some of its side effects. However DRM enabled video and music streaming. All video and music streaming nowadays is because DRM exists, like it or not.

Major movie companies enabled streaming because DRM existed. Otherwise they wouldn't have. And because they did, I can stream on my Linux desktop that doesn't support DRM, even if sometimes it's just SD quality.

I'll probably get downvoted to hell about this but this has the potential to enable even more things. Anything that has multiplayer goes into extreme lengths to prevent client tampering and cheating. Ensuring the validity of the client is a very common in gaming but also in enterprise.

So, yes, there's a need for that. There are things that aren't happening today because this feature doesn't exist.

It's official: EU probing bundling of Teams with Microsoft 365

Re: s/Internet Explorer/Teams/g

Because Microsoft and Apple have very good marketing. They have convinced people and officials that they are good while they're both creating very tight ecosystems.

RHEL drama, ChromeOS and more ... Our vultures speak freely about the latest in Linux

Not easy to watch

The video isn't visible on AMP which is what Google Discover/News sends me to. Took forever until I realized that. Also, could you please provide a transcript? I read most of my news at a place where I can't listen to a video and so I can't easily watch this one. Plus, you get the benefit of better search engine indexing.

Google, DeepMind accused of 'stealing the internet' to create Bard AI chatbot

Nonsense

Looks like another opportunity for lawyers to make money.

Microsoft puts out Outlook fire, says everything's fine with Teams malware flaw

They call it Monday

Every week is a rough week for Microsoft products.

Supreme Court says Genius' song lyric copying claim against Google wasn't smart

I guess that those geniuses (Genius Holdings LLC, great name) hadn't heard of robots.txt.

Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

Re: Google does not want a federal AI agency

The UK already did that and it is more reasonable than creating broad laws. Regulation of Medical AI-based health recommendations is indeed much different than AI-based credit checks. One is great the other is deplorable.

The UK is creating a global set of guidelines that reach agency will then use to draft laws. It's a sensible approach regardless of what Microsoft says.

Millions of Gigabyte PC motherboards backdoored? What's the actual score?

Re: How do we defend against this? - Linux edition

For a push system an encrypted root filesystem should solve the problem since it won't be able to write anything there. Not encrypting your disks is a much bigger problem so the BIOS would be the least of your concerns.

Google veep calls out Microsoft's cloud software licensing 'tax'

Microsoft being Microsoft

From the company that forcefully installed Edge on all PCs and used to ask for additional money in order to enable TCP/IP on Windows.