Comment Re:Here it comes (Score 1) 70
Over blown and over hyped. Turns out gravity is 'really' good at bringing things down that have no way to keep up their own momentum.
Comment Damn that slope is slippery. (Score 1) 97
First it was just someone no one heard of just, popping up out nowhere. Putting pull requests in multiple projects and distro's to add age verification.
Now a push to charge for access.
Next comes the knock on your door asking if you're using unauthorized software.
Comment For now. (Score -1, Offtopic) 57
With how SystemD acts like the old Microsoft, assimilating everything into one giant blob of code violating the unix like philosophy. Won't be long till systemD asks this upon every boot.
Comment Re:no dude (Score 1) 23
Nothing you said disproves that. It's not a hack, just turning the og console into an emulated version of itself, at that point you might as well emulate the entire thing on a modern pc. Because you're no longer using real hardware and any advantages that come with that but all the disadvantages of imperfect emulation.
A hack would be tapping into the internal video data lines/output/traces to input into an hdmi encoder chip for an hdmi port. But no we don't do that now, we just cram a raspberry pi, and emulate the entire video subsystem to get an hdmi output. Or in this specific case. a Hack would be overclocking the actual chip.
Comment Might as well use a software emulator. (Score 2) 23
I am hating the recent trend of sticking a raspberry pi into a retro console to 'emulate' part of it and calling it a hack.
If you're going to do that, might as well emulate it via software on a pc. you can leverage a full modern graphics stack, api's,a nd shaders to enhance the game.
Submission + - r/linux poster unearths Meta's lobbying net behind OS Age Verfication blitz (archive.org)
He Who Has No Name writes: In an incredibly in-depth researched post that was removed by Reddit mods almost as soon as it went up but is preserved at Archive.org, Reddit user Ok_Lingonberry3296 has dug deep into lobbying activity and records across multiple states and at the federal level to unearth what — or who — is behind the nationwide state-level and federal legislation blitz of nearly identical age verification laws targeting operating systems instead of companies — with no carveout for open source, no awareness of how these centralized control models break when applied to a FOSS operating system like Linux, and no apparent regard for the avalanche of second order effects the legislation could cause in contexts like embedded devices, VMs, and data centers.
The culprit that emerges isn't a huge surprise: a recently created lobbying org called the Digital Childhood Alliance, which appears to be functionally a front group for the lobbying efforts of... (drumroll) ...Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, formerly Facebook.
Ok_Lingonberry3296 writes: "...Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her. The bill as drafted required only app stores (Apple, Google) to verify user ages. It did not require social media platforms to do anything.
...Senator Jay Morris, who expanded the bill to include app developers alongside app stores after Google's senior director of government affairs publicly questioned why "Mark Zuckerberg is so keen on passing these bills." When Morris introduced his amendment, Meta went silent. The conference committee compromise maintained dual responsibility but kept the primary burden on app stores, which is what Meta wanted from the start.
At that same Senate hearing, Morris directly questioned DCA Executive Director Casey Stefanski about who funds her organization. She reportedly deflected, said she "wasn't comfortable answering," then under continued pressure admitted tech companies provide funding but refused to name them."
The research gets into funding, connected groups (on both sides of the political aisle) involved with lobbying, messaging, funding, and other parts of the legislative push, and most of all, tracks the money.
For those that want to dig into the research itself, OK_Lingonberry3296 posted their entire folder of research and sources on github, here: github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
A quick synopsis of where the US laws currently stand:
CA | AB-1043 | Enacted, effective Jan 1, 2027
CO | SB26-051 | Passed Senate, in House committee
LA | HB-570 | Enacted, effective July 1, 2026
UT | SB-142 | Enacted, first in nation
TX | SB-2420 | Enjoined by federal judge
NY | S8102A | Pending
IL | HB-3304, HB-4140, SB-2037 | Pending
Federal | KOSA, ASAA | Pending
The culprit that emerges isn't a huge surprise: a recently created lobbying org called the Digital Childhood Alliance, which appears to be functionally a front group for the lobbying efforts of... (drumroll)
Ok_Lingonberry3296 writes: "...Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her. The bill as drafted required only app stores (Apple, Google) to verify user ages. It did not require social media platforms to do anything.
At that same Senate hearing, Morris directly questioned DCA Executive Director Casey Stefanski about who funds her organization. She reportedly deflected, said she "wasn't comfortable answering," then under continued pressure admitted tech companies provide funding but refused to name them."
The research gets into funding, connected groups (on both sides of the political aisle) involved with lobbying, messaging, funding, and other parts of the legislative push, and most of all, tracks the money.
For those that want to dig into the research itself, OK_Lingonberry3296 posted their entire folder of research and sources on github, here: github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
A quick synopsis of where the US laws currently stand:
CA | AB-1043 | Enacted, effective Jan 1, 2027
CO | SB26-051 | Passed Senate, in House committee
LA | HB-570 | Enacted, effective July 1, 2026
UT | SB-142 | Enacted, first in nation
TX | SB-2420 | Enjoined by federal judge
NY | S8102A | Pending
IL | HB-3304, HB-4140, SB-2037 | Pending
Federal | KOSA, ASAA | Pending
Comment Been there, done that (Score 1) 160
Here in British Columbia we just changed our clocks for the last time and will remain on UTC-7 indefinitely. Parts of B.C. (the northeast part) have been UTC-7 all year for a long time. The southeast part has been Mountain time (UTC-7/UTC-6) for a long time. Neither are changing how they do time.
I applaud losing the time change but I'm not crazy about permanent DST. People obviously haven't thought this through, what it's going to feel like come November.
...laura
Comment Just do it! (Score 3, Interesting) 182
Near-lifelong B.C. resident here...
People have grumbled about time changes as long as I can remember. Pick one. Stick to it. Just do it.
I can't say I agree with their choice. Not so much the crazy late sunset in the summer - we're used to that - but the very late sunrise in the winter. The sun will still set by 5 in December and January. So what?
...laura
Comment My big beef (Score 1) 124
"Please" and "thank you" are relics of a bygone age to most people.
The one that pisses me off is the habit of customer service people addressing men respectfully ("sir"), but not addressing women with respect ("ma'am" or equivalent). This isn't an issue in places like Texas, but it's very much an issue here in Canada.
...laura
Comment Different this time? (Score 1) 138
When I first saw 4k I was startled by the picture quality. I also winced at the price tag, and shook my head at the lack of native 4k content. I now own a 4k TV, stream lots of 4k content on line, and generally like what I see. I shoot my own YouTube videos in 4k.
Is 8K just not that much better? Lack of content? Or just bad timing, people would rather spend money on food than a new toy?
...laura
Comment Yea right. (Score 1) 1
Like that is 'really' what it will be used for. Instead of killing off political dissent and stopping movements like amelia before they get started.
Comment Re:No, they don't (Score 1) 34
Yes they do. When markets and Capitalism satisfy lower needs in the famous 'maslow's hierarchy of needs'. Peopl can turn to each other with less suspicion of them being a threat to these needs. It also helps when a society is more homogeneous culturally and racially because it gets past the primal 'us vs. them' tribalism our stone age brain runs on.
Submission + - Should Real-World Examples be Required for Standards and Other Mandates?
theodp writes: If someone wants to impose standards, forms, documentation requirements, and other mandates on others, it seems only fair that they should be able to — and required to — demonstrate it in action first, right? Without real-world examples of what is considered 'good', people are essentially asked to sign off on a black box without a clear idea of what is being demanded, how much work it may entail, and in the end how worthwhile it even may be.
Surprisingly, that's not how things tend to play out in practice in industry, academia, and other organizations. A case in point is the proposed new Computer Science + AI Standards for pre-kindergarten to high school students assembled by a consortium of educators, tech-backed nonprofits, and tech industry advisors that aims to shape how CS+AI is taught in classrooms. A Friday morning LinkedIn post from the Computer Science Teachers Association reminds educators that they have 72 hours to "help us improve them [the standards] by reviewing and completing our feedback form by 9am ET on Monday, January 12."
Under development since 2023, the 247-page standards document is chock full of students-should-be-able-to pronouncements for all grade levels but offers no concrete examples of what that looks like in practice in terms of acceptable student deliverables or teacher lesson plans — e.g., "Students should be able to create a functional, rule-based AI for a Non-Playable Character (NPC) using programming or visual scripting. Students’ implementation must be based on a recognized AI method (e.g., finite-state machine, behavior tree)."
As Ross Perot once said, the devil is in the details. So, in a world where more and more people specialize in governance, risk, and compliance jobs that involve specifying mandates for others to comply with, shouldn't it be a red flag if they can't show real-world examples of how to satisfy those mandates? If you require it, shouldn't you be able to demonstrate it? Otherwise, doesn't it signal that the mandate hasn’t been validated? And open the door to being told “that’s not what I meant” for those left to guess at what was meant?
Surprisingly, that's not how things tend to play out in practice in industry, academia, and other organizations. A case in point is the proposed new Computer Science + AI Standards for pre-kindergarten to high school students assembled by a consortium of educators, tech-backed nonprofits, and tech industry advisors that aims to shape how CS+AI is taught in classrooms. A Friday morning LinkedIn post from the Computer Science Teachers Association reminds educators that they have 72 hours to "help us improve them [the standards] by reviewing and completing our feedback form by 9am ET on Monday, January 12."
Under development since 2023, the 247-page standards document is chock full of students-should-be-able-to pronouncements for all grade levels but offers no concrete examples of what that looks like in practice in terms of acceptable student deliverables or teacher lesson plans — e.g., "Students should be able to create a functional, rule-based AI for a Non-Playable Character (NPC) using programming or visual scripting. Students’ implementation must be based on a recognized AI method (e.g., finite-state machine, behavior tree)."
As Ross Perot once said, the devil is in the details. So, in a world where more and more people specialize in governance, risk, and compliance jobs that involve specifying mandates for others to comply with, shouldn't it be a red flag if they can't show real-world examples of how to satisfy those mandates? If you require it, shouldn't you be able to demonstrate it? Otherwise, doesn't it signal that the mandate hasn’t been validated? And open the door to being told “that’s not what I meant” for those left to guess at what was meant?
Comment Not cool! (Score 0) 155
Subaru do a lot of things well - they're masters of all-wheel drive - but this is nuts.
I bought a VW Taos earlier this year with the usual trial subscription to Sirius XM. I was going to pull the plug when it expired but Sirius XM offered me a steep discount if I re-upped, so I did. They did it so readily that I wonder how many people are paying full price...
The bulk of my listening is two channels, Hits One and The Pulse.
...laura
Comment Only part of the puzzle (Score 1) 222
Yes, there are corridors and city pairs in the U.S. where high-speed rail could get people from one city to another quickly and efficiently. But what do they do when they get there? How do they get around?
...laura
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