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Comment Re:History repeating itself: Google Glass (Score 1) 135

That's the thing, someone who believes their day-to-day life is so fascinating that they need to be able to record video at any given moment, probably has a severe case of main character syndrome.

So yeah, "asshole glasses" definitely fits.

Maybe, but only if you assume that the intent is to share that video with others or whatever.

On the flip side, I can think of a lot of useful reasons to do so, mostly involving use of large amounts of AI to go back and process the data. Imagine losing something and being able to ask, "Where is this," and getting an answer about where you left it. Imagine being able to say, "Was [insert person] part of the conversation where I said [insert subject]" and getting an answer. The potential impact of always-on recording for assisting with memory recall is enormous, assuming adequate storage and processing power.

Also, it completely solves the "You look familiar" problem, both in the "Did I meet this person?" sense and in the "What is his/her name?" sense.

Comment Re: Good for her! (Score 1) 135

I think it's the same in the US. You can't publish someone's photo (unless they are just part of the background) without getting a signed release.

Nope. Not true. You can't use it commercially, but the definition of commercial use excludes a lot of things that you might think are commercial, e.g. any form of artwork, book covers, Facebook posting, etc.

This doesn't give you the right to record someone who has asked you not to record them, though, especially if there is audio and it is a two-party consent state. And if you are deliberately confronting someone in public who asks you not to record them, it could also run afoul of harassment laws.

PlayStation (Games)

Why Gen Z is Using Retro Tech (bbc.com) 4

"People in their teens and early 20s are increasingly turning to old school tech," reports the BBC, "in a bid to unplug from the online world." Amazon UK told BBC Scotland News that retro-themed products surged in popularity during its Black Friday event, with portable vinyl turntables, Tamagotchis and disposable cameras among their best sellers. Retailers Currys and John Lewis also said they had seen retro gadgets making a comeback with sales of radios, instant cameras and alarm clocks showing big jumps.

While some people scroll endlessly through Netflix in search of their next watch, 17-year-old Declan prefers the more traditional approach of having a DVD in his hands. He grew up surrounded by his gran's collection and later bought his own after visiting a shop with a friend. "The main selling point for me is the cases," he says. Streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ dominate the market but Declan says he values ownership. "It's nice to have something you own instead of paying for subscriptions all the time," he says. "If I lost access to streaming tomorrow, I'd still have my favourite movies ready to watch."

He admits DVDs are a "dying way of watching movies" but that makes them cheaper. "I think they're just cool, there's something authentic about having DVDs," he says. "These things are generations old, it's nice to have them available."

The BBC also writes that one 21-year-old likes the "deliberate artistry" of traditional-camera photography — and the nostalgic experience of using one. They interview a 20-year-old who says vinyl records have a "more authentic sound" — and he appreciates having the physical disc and jacket art.

And one 21-year-old even tracked down the handheld PlayStation Portable he'd used as a kid...

Comment Re:Here's an idea (Score 1) 54

IMO probably the best thing to happen with this industry is for copyright laws to be clipped back to 28 years. The artists will lose their shit, but honestly, the Berne convention just feels like it's designed for the sole purpose of allowing them (and the studios) to just keep rent seeking indefinitely.

I have an even more radical proposal. Roll back copyright duration to 28 years, but only for works for hire.

  • Works of corporate authorship (movies, etc.): 14 +14 (renewal required).
  • Works of individual authorship: 50 years or the life of the author, whichever is longer.

This strikes a balance that acknowledges individuals' lower ability to earn money off of a work, and ensures that individuals are able to continue benefitting from their works for the rest of their lives, while still ensuring that musical works written when my long-deceased grandparents were children are no longer locked away where no one can perform them without expensive licensing and ensuring that people who never contributed anything towards the works' creation (e.g. the grandchildren of a composer, author, or artist) don't get to live off of other people's work for the rest of their lives.

Comment Re: They are popular in JP because they work (Score 1) 196

People here are acting like bigger vehicles in the U.S. are due to some conspiracy around efficiency standards. They're not.

The shift toward massive trucks and SUVs in the U.S. is not a conspiracy as you stated, but it's not purely consumer preference either. It's a direct, documented, and mathematically verifiable consequence of how the U.S. government rewrote fuel efficiency regulations in 2011.

Prior to 2011, CAFE standards were simple: a car company’s entire fleet of "light trucks" had to average a certain MPG number (e.g., 24 mpg). It didn't matter how big or small the individual trucks were. The Obama administration reformed these rules to close loopholes... but they inadvertently created a new one. They switched to a "footprint-based" standard.

It was broken long before that. Minivans have always been treated as light trucks despite not being trucks in any meaningful sense of the word, and industry interference has prevented light truck standards from keeping up with technological improvements.

As long as we have such a culture of regulatory capture, I don't think these sorts of standards are ever going to do what they are intended to do.

Comment Re:They are popular in JP because they work (Score 1) 196

Are there states that don't allow that? I know Tennessee and California both do, though the latter is somewhat more problematic because of emissions control laws.

I think the 35 MPH road limitation is mostly about wanting to prevent people from impeding traffic. Here in FL you're able to ride a bike/e-bike/e-scooter on any road that isn't a toll or limited access highway, regardless of posted speed limit, at your own peril.

The "at your own peril" thing is a lot easier to justify when you have high situational awareness because of absolutely no expectation of safety in a low-speed collision (bicycle) than when you do have that expectation (vehicle with a roll cage).

Also, bicycles can't rapidly accelerate, are very small, and generally can't get very fast at all, so they are quick to pass compared with something the size and speed of a low-speed car. This reduces the risk of them causing accidents significantly (both with the bicycle and with oncoming vehicles).

In general, the assumption is that if it looks like a car, it should act like one. When that assumption is violated, bad things happen.

Comment Re:From Volkswagon to Trumptruck (Score 1) 196

Honestly if it gets Americans to stop driving oversized pedestrian murdermachines then it may actually be something positive to come out of his administration. I mean to be clear it won't happen, and even if it did this isn't the intention, but still wouldn't it be nice to imagine a world where America's pedestrian accident rate was *not* increasing?

America's pedestrian accident rate is increasing primarily because of pedestrian distraction, not because cars are getting less safe. The fatality rate could be caused by cars getting less safe, but not the rate of accidents, except to the limited extent that touchscreens make driving harder.

If you really want pedestrian accidents to stop happening, you need to do three things:

  • Mandate that all intersections have a separate pedestrian cycle with a button to activate it or camera-based pedestrian detection.
  • Mandate that all intersections have appropriate light control over right turns on red, such that they are not allowed during the pedestrian cycle.
  • Strictly enforce this for both drivers and pedestrians for the first few months, ticketing both pedestrians and drivers when they enter an intersection at the wrong time.

This ensures that A. cars don't have to wait for pedestrians that don't exist, B. cars have to wait for pedestrians only once even if the pedestrians are crossing in multiple directions, and C. no cars are in the intersection at the same time as pedestrians.

It improves road throughput for both pedestrians and drivers *and* makes the intersections safer. There's not much downside to this.

Movies

Is Netflix Trying to Buy Warner Bros. or Kill It? (variety.com) 26

Why does Netflix want to buy Warner Bros, asks the chief film critic at the long-running motion-picture magazine Variety. "It is hard, at this moment, to resist the suspicion that the ultimate reason... is to eliminate the competition." [Warner Bros. is] one of the only companies that's keeping movies as we've known them alive... Some people think movies are going the way of the horse-and-buggy. A company like Warner Bros. has been the tangible proof that they're not. Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, has a different agenda. He has been unabashed about declaring that the era of movies seen in movie theaters is an antiquated concept. This is what he believes — which is fine. I think a more crucial point is that this is what he wants.

The Netflix business strategy isn't simply about being the most successful streaming company. It's about changing the way people watch movies; it's about replacing what we used to call moviegoing with streaming. (You could still call it moviegoing, only now you're just going into your living room.) It in no way demonizes Sarandos — he'd probably take it as a compliment — to say that there's a world-domination aspect to the Netflix grand strategy. Sarandos's vision is to have the entire planet wired, with everyone watching movies and shows at home. There's a school of thought that sees this an advance, a step forward in civilization. "Remember the days when we used to have to go out to a movie theater? How funny! Now you can just pop up a movie — no trailers! — with the click of a remote...."

Once he owns Warner Bros., will Sarandos keep using the studio to make movies that enjoy powerful runs in theaters the way Sinners and Weapons and One Battle After Another did? In the statement he made to investors and media today, Sarandos said, "I'd say right now, you should count on everything that is planned on going to the theater through Warner Bros. will continue to go to the theaters through Warner Bros." He added, "But our primary goal is to bring first-run movies to our members, because that's what they're looking for." Not exactly a ringing declaration of loyalty to the religion of cinema. And given Sarandos's track record, there is no reason to believe that he will suddenly change his spots.

A letter sent to Congress by a group of anonymous Hollywood producers, who voiced "grave concerns" about Netflix buying Warner Bros., stated, "They have no incentive to support theatrical exhibition, and they have every incentive to kill it." If that happens, though, I have no doubt that Sarandos will be smart enough to do it gradually. Warner Bros. films will probably be released in a "normal" fashion...for a while. Maybe a year or two. But five years from now? There is good reason to believe that by then, a "Warner Bros. movie," even a DC comic-book extravaganza, would be a streaming-only release, or maybe a two-weeks-in-theaters release, all as a more general way of trying to shorten the theatrical window, which could be devastating to the movie business.

Do we know all this to be true? No, but the indicators are somewhat overpowering. (He's been explicit about the windows...)

An anonymous group of "concerned feature film producers" sent an open letter to Congress warning Netflix would "effectively hold a noose around the theatrical marketplace," reports Variety.

And CNN also got this quote from Cinema United, a trade association that represents more than 30,000 movie screens in the United States. "Netflix's stated business model does not support theatrical exhibition," Cinema United President/CEO Michael O'Leary said in a statement. "In fact, it is the opposite."

Comment Re:ADHD does not exist (Score 2) 148

45 percent of students at the law school cited have mental issues? That defies belief.

Not really. The rate of students with mental issues in psychology is apparently even higher. The thing is that a lot of criminally-minded are attracted to the study of law and hence they cheat and think that is fine. That is a whole mental issue in itself.

As to a solution, see my other posting: https://slashdot.org/comments....
Yes, that requires better teaching. But that would be a really, really good idea anyways.

Unix

New FreeBSD 15 Retires 32-Bit Ports and Modernizes Builds (theregister.com) 9

FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE arrived this week, notes this report from The Register, which calls it the latest release "of the Unix world's leading alternative to Linux." As well as numerous bug fixes and upgrades to many of its components, the major changes in this version are reductions in the number of platforms the OS supports, and in how it's built and how its component software is packaged.

FreeBSD 15 has significantly reduced support for 32-bit platforms. Compared to FreeBSD 14 in 2023, there are no longer builds for x86-32, POWER, or ARM-v6. As the release notes put it:

"The venerable 32-bit hardware platforms i386, armv6, and 32-bit powerpc have been retired. 32-bit application support lives on via the 32-bit compatibility mode in their respective 64-bit platforms. The armv7 platform remains as the last supported 32-bit platform. We thank them for their service."

Now FreeBSD supports five CPU architectures — two Tier-1 platforms, x86-64 and AArch64, and three Tier-2 platforms, armv7 and up, powerpc64le, and riscv64.

Arguably, it's time. AMD's first 64-bit chips started shipping 22 years ago. Intel launched the original x86 chip, the 8086 in 1978. These days, 64-bit is nearly as old as the entire Intel 80x86 platform was when the 64-bit versions first appeared. In comparison, a few months ago, Debian 13 also dropped its x86-32 edition — six years after Canonical launched its first x86-64-only distro, Ubuntu 19.10.

Another significant change is that this is the first version built under the new pkgbase system, although it's still experimental and optional for now. If you opt for a pkgbase installation, then the core OS itself is installed from multiple separate software packages, meaning that the whole system can be updated using the package manager. Over in the Linux world, this is the norm, but Linux is a very different beast... The plan is that by FreeBSD 16, scheduled for December 2027, the restructure will be complete, the old distribution sets will be removed, and the current freebsd-update command and its associated infrastructure can be turned off.

Another significant change is reproducible builds, a milestone the project reached in late October. This change is part of a multi-project initiative toward ensuring deterministic compilation: to be able to demonstrate that a certain set of source files and compilation directives is guaranteed to produce identical binaries, as a countermeasure against compromised code. A handy side-effect is that building the whole OS, including installation media images, no longer needs root access.

There are of course other new features. Lots of drivers and subsystems have been updated, and this release has better power management, including suspend and resume. There's improved wireless networking, with support for more Wi-Fi chipsets and faster wireless standards, plus updated graphics drivers... The release announcement calls out the inclusion of OpenZFS 2.4.0-rc4, OpenSSL 3.5.4, and OpenSSH 10.0 p2, and notes the inclusion of some new quantum-resistant encryption systems...

In general, we found FreeBSD 15 easier and less complicated to work with than either of the previous major releases. It should be easier on servers too. The new OCI container support in FreeBSD 14.2, which we wrote about a year ago, is more mature now. FreeBSD has its own version of Podman, and you can run Linux containers on FreeBSD. This means you can use Docker commands and tools, which are familiar to many more developers than FreeBSD's native Jail system.


"FreeBSD has its own place in servers and the public cloud, but it's getting easier to run it as a desktop OS as well," the article concludes. "It can run all the main Linux desktops, including GNOME on Wayland."

"There's no systemd here, and never will be — and no Flatpak or Snap either, for that matter.

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