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Comment Re:They're gonna make NAT illegal (Score 1) 22

Well, that'd be one way to increase IPv6 adoption!

That's always been a curiosity to me - why haven't the big industries pushed for IPv6 adoption? I mean they lost their cases because of NAT hiding families or more behind a single IP address (mobile users are hidden behind CGNAT).

You would think they would push for the rapid adoption of a technology that would let them individually identify a device which would let them for the most part identify a single user. (Sure some people still have shared computers - the poor, for instance, but the kind of people the RIAA and MPAA go after are generally single device used by a single person).

Especially after some ISPs even turn their routers into "guest WiFi protals" so they can provide a blanket of WiFi coverage.

It's always been strange they aren't pushing technology that would let them resume suing people again.

Comment Re:Bullshit! (Score 1) 42

There's a huge difference:

Our governments, at least in theory, are controlled by us, the people. Ok, the 1% who make the major campaign contributions. But that's still a lot of people.

The number of SpaceX or Amazon shareholders who have enough shares to have a say in these matters is single-digits. So power is concentrated in much fewer hands.

Comment Re:Of course it does (Score 1) 42

Given dynamic battlefield, I don't think that is as easily done as you think, and the moment SpaceX makes a mistake and knocks out a Ukrainian drone on a mission, they'll be guilty for everything. There's not really a winning position for them here.

Russia isn't hiding that it targets civilian infrastructure. They still wage war the way everyone did it in 1939-1945. US and UK bombers essentially just opened the doors above German cities and let the unguided bombs fall wherever. We're not doing that anymore because most of the world learned that despite all this, they didn't exactly surrender. So it's a huge waste of resources. Russia, on the other hand, still thinks that Ukrainians will agree to becoming Russians due to a few cold and dark winters.

Comment Re:Color me curious.... (Score 1) 37

What possible legal use does a "mixing service" provide?

Hiding money flow from public view. It is trivial to automatically trace all transfers on the blockchain. And the same way I don't post my banking history to the Internet, I have a reasonable need to not have all of my Bitcoin transactions fully transparent to everyone in the world.

So tl;dr: The legal use is: Protect my privacy.

That doesn't mean I am doing anything illegal. I might be doing something perfectly legal but socially controversial - maybe I make campaign contributions to the communist party, or consume an unhealthy amount of furry porn. It might also be legal but I have a need to hide my finances from someone specific - maybe an abusive spouse, maybe overly controlling parent, maybe a stalker.

For the moment, Bitcoin is still a bit of a niche thing, but the more it moves into mainstream, the more people will have the interest and the capabilities to use Bitcoin to breach people's privacy when they use Bitcoins to pay for something.

Comment Re:robot parking lot: no need for lights, sounds? (Score 0) 60

Because we don't want them to instantly kill the first kid who jumps the fence, or the next careless service technician. Automated industrial robots (which is what these cars are, really) have these things for a reason.

I really hope that Waymo's cars aren't relying on their Nader-beepers to avoid killing people. They should be (and AFAIK are) relying instead on their video cameras, LIDARs, and other sensors to stop the car before it hits the wayward kid/technician.

Comment Re: "Microsoft said it's working to resolve the is (Score 2) 71

Remember that these are the people who invented the use of CTRL-ALT-DEL hardware interrupts to "secure" the Windows login screen. That tells you all you need to know really.

Yes, they should have done it the right way instead!

Err, what was the right way? It's not obvious to me, given that Microsoft doesn't have design control over the hardware its software runs on.

Comment Re:They are using AI to code core Windows function (Score 1) 71

Do you really think Karen in Finance is going to request an RDS instance and vibe code a nice react frontend for her CRUD??

At this point, my biggest fear is that she will -- and then call me over to debug the AI-generated codebase, when it inevitably doesn't work quite right.

Comment Re:And HDCP madness (Score 3, Insightful) 90

I propose a law requiring companies to continue to provide old versions of software. They can remove a feature from the new version, but I can still get the old one. In the past, if Microsoft removed a feature from Word 2005 for example, then one could refuse to upgrade. I could save the installer. Yes, eventually it won't work any longer, and I am not saying they must support every version into perpetuity. But if Netflix removes a feature, I can't download the old version. So they should be barred from putting a barrier in place preventing access or use of it.

Comment Re:What's old is new again (Score 1) 42

That wasn't *all* I said, but it is apparently as far as you read. But let's stay there for now. You apparently disagree with this, whnich means that you think that LLMs are the only kind of AI that there is, and that language models can be trained to do things like design rocket engines.

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