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Comment I can see a business plan. (Score 1) 21

Room temperature superconductors could be a trillion dollar industry. After getting the university to state their disavowal of his "research" on record, he goes out and gets venture capital. If (as suspected) it fails, he will have enough salted away to live off for decades. In the unlikely event that it succeeds, the university won't be able to claim that it owns the research it disavowed.

6) ???

7) PROFIT!

Comment Re:Weird (Score 1) 20

by kiore (#64335003) Attached to: Threads Opens Beta To 'Fediverse Sharing'

Yes, as a user of both, I'm trying to think what reading Mastodon in Threads gives you that reading Mastodon natively doesn't.

On the other hand It might make Threads seem less barren for a short while until major Mastodon instances block Threads.

Comment Re:Wayland is not ready... (Score 1) 75

There will come a time when Wayland is feature complete enough to replace X for me, but until then I will resist attempts to force it on me by distros.

Latest missing feature I've found is numlockx, my wife's laptop has a small keyboard & always boots up with a little under half the alphabet keys being numbers. She doesn't do data entry. I want a login script for her to turn this off for her

A few years back, I couldn't run Synaptic as root in a window (now fixed). I like to run synaptic for application installs because I can easily check out related packages (within limits, but usually close enough for my purposes)

Comment Will no one think of the geeks? (Score 1) 188

by kiore (#64295900) Attached to: Why Desktop Linux Is Finally Growing In Popularity
I've been running Linux desktop at home for ~~25 years, and not doing Windows development professionally for 8. When someone asks for help with their Windows machine I can just say "I'm sorry I don't use Windows".

If this trend to Linux popularity continues I might have to switch to FreeBSD & if that gets popular, to something like RetroBSD.

Submission + - Apple revives old fight with Hey after rejecting new calendar app (theverge.com)

Submitted by vepohig206
vepohig206 writes: The new year was supposed to begin with a brand spanking new calendar app. But roughly 72 hours after the premium email service Hey announced its latest feature — an integrated calendar — co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson received some unwelcome news from Apple: it was rejecting a standalone iOS app for Hey Calendar, because non-paying users couldn’t do anything when they opened the app up.

New users can’t sign up for Hey Calendar directly on the app — Basecamp, which makes Hey, makes users first sign up through a browser. Apple’s App Store rules require most paid services to offer users the ability to pay and sign up through the app, ensuring the company gets up to a 30 percent cut. The controversial rule has a ton of gray areas and carve-outs (i.e. reader apps like Spotify and Kindle get an exception) and is the subject of antitrust fights in multiple countries.

But as Hansson detailed on X and in a subsequent blog post, he found Apple’s rejection insulting for another reason. Close to four years ago, the company rejected Hey’s original iOS app for its email service for the exact same reason. “Apple just called to let us know they’re rejecting the HEY Calendar app from the App Store (in current form). Same bullying tactics as last time: Push delicate rejections to a call with a first-name-only person who’ll softly inform you it’s your wallet or your kneecaps,” wrote Hansson in a post on X.

The outcome of the 2020 fight actually worked out in Hey’s favor. After days of back and forth between Apple’s App Store Review Board and Basecamp, the Hey team agreed to a rather creative solution suggested by Apple exec Phil Schiller. Hey would offer a free option for the iOS app, allowing new users to sign up directly. But the email service proposed a slight twist — users who signed up via the iOS app got a free, temporary randomized email address that worked for 14 days — after which they had to pay to upgrade. Currently, Hey email users can only pay for an account through the browser.

Following the saga with Hey, Apple made a carve-out to its App Store rules that stated that free companion apps to certain types of paid web services were not required to have an in-app payment mechanism. But, as Hansson mentions on X, a calendar app wasn’t mentioned in the list of services that Apple now makes an exception for, which includes VOIP, cloud storage, web hosting — and of course — email.
“After spending 19 days to review our submission, causing us to miss a long-planned January 2nd launch date, Apple rejected our stand-alone free companion app ‘because it doesn’t do anything’. That is because users are required to login with an existing account to use the functionality,” wrote Hansson in a blog post.

As Hansson details in an X post, Hey plans to fight Apple’s decision — though he didn’t specify what route they will be taking. The Verge has reached out to both Hey and Apple for comment.

Submission + - Drones Are the New Drug Mules (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last week border officials in the Punjab region of India revealed they intercepted 107 drug-carrying drones sent by smuggling gangs last year over the border from Pakistan, the highest number on record. Most were carrying heroin or opium from Pakistan to be dropped and received by collaborators in the Punjab, notorious for having India’s worst levels of opiate addiction. Last year the head of a police narcotics unit in Lahore, a city in Pakistan which borders the Punjab, was dismissed after he was suspected of running a drug trafficking gang sending drones over to India. But the use of cheap flying robots instead of humans to smuggle drugs across borders is a worldwide phenomenon. [...]

[D]rones will likely become an everyday part of drug dealing too, according to Peter Warren Singer, author of multiple books on national security and a Fellow at think tank New America, with legit medicines due to be delivered by drone in the U.S. later this year and maybe in the U.K. too. “We are just scraping the surface of what is possible, as drone deliveries become more and more common in the commercial world, it will be the same with delivery of illicit goods. In our book, Burn-In, we explain how a future city will see drones zipping about delivering everything from groceries and burritos to drugs, both prescribed by a doctor or bought off a dealer. Drones have traditionally been used by governments and corporations for what are known as the "3 D's" jobs that are too dull, dirty, or dangerous for humans. For criminals, it is the same, except add in another D: Dependable. A drone doesn't steal the product and can't be arrested or snitch if caught.”

Liam O’Shea, senior research fellow for organized crime and policing at defense and security thinktank RUSI, said drones were at the moment of limited value to wholesale traffickers and organized criminal gangs because of their range and the weight they can carry. “It makes sense that smugglers would seek to use drones. They are cheap and easy to acquire. They also lower the risks involved in some transactions, as smugglers do not have to be physically present during transactions. They offer opportunities for smuggling in areas where previous routes were too risky, such as prisons and over securitized borders. “I expect them to be of greater value to smaller players and distributors dealing with smaller quantities. Wholesale drug traffickers will still need to use routes that facilitate smuggling at higher volume or using drones to make multiple trips, which entails risks of detection. That may well change as improvements in technology improve drones’ carrying capacity and crime groups are better able to access drones with greater capacity.”

Comment Re:Yearly? (Score 2) 23

They put out an Extended Support Release roughly every 42 weeks which is obviously 10 weeks short of a year, and supported for a year. A bit of juggling and you can get your internal schedule very close to a year without compromising security.

I find their thinking on releases and security support a bit too opaque for my taste, luckily for me I'm a Debian user and the Debian Security Team applies security fixes to the ESR version they take for a few years. I hope other Debian based OSes have equivalent security teams.

Comment Blender? (Score 1) 164

by kiore (#63840744) Attached to: US Copyright Office Denies Protection for Another AI-Created Image

What does this precedent do for movies created by 2D or 3D computer graphics animation software such as Blender?

People are already starting to use AI to create images and effects for Blender. Stability AI has created a Blender plugin.

A human scripts it and, at least for now, creates the models then Blender creates the movie but make it easy & a lot of people are going to use AI for a lot of the donkey-work. Surely, using a computer tool to do the donkey work for the creative person is just a natural advance on using an animation tool or as happened before CGI a room full of humans drawing on cels.

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