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Submission + - Trump stuns auto industry with tiny-car move that promises ultra-cheap wheels (dailymail.co.uk)

sinij writes:

President Donald Trump says he's moving to legalize Japan's beloved kei cars — the tiny, boxy, almost toy-like vans, trucks, and coupes that have a cult following overseas. And he wants US automakers to start building them here.

This makes a lot of sense in urban settings, especially when electrified. Hopefully these are restricted from highway system.

Submission + - Microsoft faces new complaint for allegedly aiding Israeli war crimes in Gaza (aljazeera.com)

Alain Williams writes: The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has announced it filed a complaint against Microsoft, accusing the global tech giant of unlawfully processing data on behalf of the Israeli military and facilitating the killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

In the complaint, the council asked the Data Protection Commission – the European Union’s lead data regulator for the company – to “urgently investigate” Microsoft Ireland’s processing.

“Microsoft’s technology has put millions of Palestinians in danger. These are not abstract data-protection failures — they are violations that have enabled real-world violence,” Joe O’Brien, ICCL’s executive director, said in a statement.

“When EU infrastructure is used to enable surveillance and targeting, the Irish Data Protection Commission must step in — and it must use its full powers to hold Microsoft to account.”

After months of complaints from rights groups and Microsoft whistleblowers, the company said in September it cancelled some services to the Israeli military over concerns that it was violating Microsoft’s terms of service by using cloud computing software to spy on millions of Palestinians.

Comment Wrong? (Score 1) 89

No, it is "end to end" encryption exactly as they claimed - one of those ends is their datacenter where the data is processed.

As per the description from the linked blog:

"End-to-end encryption", or E2EE, is a method of securing data that ensures only the sender and their chosen recipient are able to view it.

The "chosen recipient" is Kohler's datacenter, so it's behaving exactly as claimed. The application functions by processing the data on their servers, which is also why a monthly fee is charged to provide the service.

You could theoretically avoid this by transmitting the data directly between the camera and your device, and doing the processing on your device, although that might not be practical

There are many much worse examples where data is routed through hosted servers unnecessarily, typically as a kludge to get around NAT restrictions.

Submission + - European Union May Not Ban Combustion Cars After All (caranddriver.com)

sinij writes:

The European Union's plan to ban new combustion cars starting in 2035 may be over before it has a chance to go into effect, if Germany's leader has anything to say about it.

2035 target was simply infeasible with current technology. While some promising new developments, like solid state batteries, are being worked on, they are not yet ready for mass production.

Comment Re:Take action? (Score 1) 76

Any communication technology can be tracked - cell towers can pinpoint your location, hard lines obviously are laid to a specific address so the idea that your location can be tracked when your using a particular service is nothing new, and many governments already require the ability to locate an individual subscriber when presented by an appropriate warrant or court order.
A service which cannot pinpoint users would be illegal in many countries and would not gain regulatory approval.

Comment Re:Why not Coca Cola? (Score 1) 143

A healthy body will regulate blood sugar, and when someone suffers from diabetes their ability to regulate blood sugar is compromised. This can result in either dangerously high or dangerously low blood sugar levels.
Doctors would recommend patients drinking a sugary energy drink if their blood sugar dips to dangerous levels, but this becomes difficult when a lot of places don't even sell full sugar drinks any more.

Someone with diabetes needs to control their sugar intake, not replace sugar entirely. This becomes a lot harder when products that previously contained a lot of sugar now contain something else without obvious differentiation on the packaging.

Some artificial sweeteners were found to pose higher risks for diabetes than sugar, for instance: https://www.oncologyrepublic.c...
and yet people are pushed towards the sweeteners as if they're a magic solution etc.

In many countries it's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid artificial sweeteners. There are many restaurants now where the only soft drinks available contain sweeteners, your only options are alcohol or water.
For years we were offered a choice, but now the full sugar choice is being increasingly taken away from people.

Comment Re:Reality (Score 1) 143

And they nodoubt run promotions encouraging you to buy more of this healthy food, buy one get one free offers, discounts for large quantities etc.
Even the healthiest of foods are unhealthy when consumed excessively.
What does this grocery store do to promote moderate consumption?

Comment Re:Excellent! Can we do this here in the uk? (Score 1) 143

Depends on the individual UPF...
There have been various drives in the past to reduce fat and salt, and in some cases these things were replaced with unhealthy quantities of sugar, or corn syrup etc.
If you push them to remove/reduce sugar, it will be almost always be replaced with something even worse.

Comment Re:Good luck (Score 1) 143

The harmful effects of cigarettes are well known. Those of us who don't want to suffer those effects simply don't smoke and we avoid *most* of those effects (aside when someone else is smoking nearby).
It's extremely easy to not smoke, there is no downside, we save money and experience better health.

For food it's much more difficult:

1) we need to consume food, we can't simply avoid it
2) smoking=bad is simple and easy to avoid, but the huge number of ingredients and processing methods are extremely difficult to comprehend and fully understand
3) food products are often changing their recipes, forcing you to constantly recheck the ingredients list
4) the full ingredient list is sometimes not available, ingredients are masked by generic terms like "natural flavorings" or sometimes not easily available at all.
5) while smoking is harmful to anyone, some foods are only harmful to a subset of individuals - eg nuts can be poisonous to those with a nut allergy but harmless to others.
6) often there are very limited options available, many restaurants only offer soft drinks and/or alcohol which makes life difficult for someone who doesn't or can't consume either of these etc.

Comment Re:Why not Coca Cola? (Score 2) 143

The replacement artificial sweeteners used in the "low sugar" soft drinks are even worse, and couple that with the marketing which basically says "this doesnt contain any sugar so you can consume as much as you want" and you have a disaster in the making.

Sugar is not harmful in sensible quantities, i would rather drink a small quantity of full sugar coca-cola than any quantity of coke zero.

Comment Re:Reality (Score 1) 143

Healthy food and market capitalism are inherently incompatible...

The solution is moderate consumption of natural traditional foods, things that our bodies have evolved over thousands of years to consume. But moderate consumption is unprofitable, the market system forces companies to:

1) encourage excessive consumption, more consumption = more profit
2) look for ways to cheapen the product to either improve margins, or compete against others

The end result is always going to be junk packed full of the cheapest possible ingredients that are not illegal or outright poisonous.

Government regulation could solve this if done properly, but usually makes things worse because current regulation focuses on saying "X is bad, reduce X", which means X gets replaced with Y where Y is something new that hasn't been studied enough to make it onto the bad list yet.

There are also things like coloring that exist solely for marketing to make the product look more appealing, but serve no nutritional purpose and could be harmful. The use of artificial coloring should really be eliminated entirely.

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