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 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 Re:Due to the ledger issue, it's about to get wors (Score 0) 67
I'll simplify it.
The longer it runs, the more hard drive space the blockchain for bitcoin needs for you to participate.
due to the nature of bitcoin, nothing gets deleted from the blockchain. After all it's a permanent record of all your transactions. ie the basis of nft's and 'decentralized currency'
As the blockchain gets bigger, less and less will be willing to join in for the space required.
With less people, transaction times will go up.
Thus the value will go down, by a LOT.
Those who came in at the start will cash out before this happens, the rest will be holding the worthless bags. ie the definition of a ponzi scheme.
Comment Due to the ledger issue, it's about to get worse. (Score -1, Troll) 67
The entire thing was a ponzi scheme anyway.
I mean a blockchain/ledger that 'never has anything removed' and 'required to be on the network or have a wallet'.
Right now it's in the hundreds of gigs. mostly surpassing low priced 'physical wallets' due to the size and processing requirements.
Soon, sooner than you would like when it gets closer to the 1tb range. With ssd's not having the capacity growth that hdd's had and still have. Along with everyone mostly ditching hdd's People will be forced to drop participation, which in turn will slow transaction clearing time even more. It'll surpass many but the fanatics willingness to participate, many won't want near to over a terabyte of data on their computer dedicated this when it can be used for other things. The gig will be up, the price will plummet faster than an asteroid, and like all ponzi schemes those who came in not long after the start, get holding the bag.
Altering the behavior of bitcoin to sunset/delete block chain entries would do the same as it is the antithesis of the mythology built up around it.
Comment Re:Sure... (Score 3, Informative) 80
How have the Amish survived your theory?
I do doubt the even medium term viability of a tech bro utopia, however. Without outside consequences, 95% of the members would end up in dungeon.
By pumping out 20+ kids, starting as soon as they're of the legal age of the U.S. to have sex. With some rarely prosecuted cases of them forcing under age girls to start, after being put in an arranged marriage.
Then Draconian, with a capital D, disciplining and out right preventing exposure to anything else till their worldview is installed through Pavlov conditioning. I.E. install pstd levels of fear for even minor infractions of their religious views.
Doesn't matter that 15 out of the 20 flee between the early teenage years to 18 years of age. Bringing with them horror stories of beating even toddlers within an inch of their lives for simple infractions like talking when not spoken to, or saying no to their parents. I'm not talking about how people now overreact to a simple spanking. I'm talking being beaten black and blue till near broken bone levels of disciplining. Or the previously mentioned underage sex.
Their worldview and belief survive by stretching the absolute right of religious freedom of and from worship, to it's absolute limit by claiming this treatment is part of their flavor of religion. While i hate how they treat their kids and adults. Especially since they no longer 'need' to pump out 20+ kids because 15-18 will die from disease and accident, though they do have the right to choose this if they want. I am 'very' hesitant to even consider the concept of pulling the protection of that absolute right for fear of its emotionally charged and justified righteous fury against this treatment. Be it used by others to justify the removal of the right for lesser perceived infractions. Like Catholic vs Protestant, or more likely Christianity vs 'any' other religion and lack their of.
Submission + - ICE buying eye-scanning tech to deport and remove people from a foot away (9news.com)
SonicSpike writes: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued a notice to purchase licenses for mobile artificial intelligence-powered iris recognition technology to aid in deportations and removals.
The mobile software from BI2 Technologies can identify individuals from 10 to 15 inches away using a smartphone app, according to the the Massachusetts-based company. It then connects with a second product that includes a database.
ICE posted a Wednesday announcement for a sole source purchase order to BI2 Technologies for licenses to both BI2's Inmate Recognition & Identification System and the Mobile Offender Recognition & Identification System for "enforcement and removal operations."
Steve Beaty, a computer science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, explained iris biometric capabilities.
"In general, it's quite accurate," Beaty said. "The iris is the part of your eye that everybody sees — the color has stripes in it and they are unique to an individual."
Beaty said recent technological advances have made iris scanning more accessible and affordable.
"The innovation is now that it's much less expensive that it can be done on less expensive devices such as phones," Beaty said. "In the past it was kind of a big standalone machine that these sorts of things could be used on."
The system compares iris scans to existing databases of photos. Beaty says that can come from a criminal database or even from photos scraped from social media profiles.
"Facial recognition companies have scraped the internet for photos," Beaty said.
But in Colorado, law enforcement agencies couldn't use the technology the same.
Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Bacon co-sponsored a 2022 Colorado law requiring police agencies to disclose their facial recognition plans and prohibiting its use as the sole basis for arrests or investigations.
"The way that we saw facial recognition working was with one to identify and match, versus profiling," Bacon said. "That's two different things."
She expressed concerns about ICE's intended use.
"The notion that ICE is going to use it to do some of those things actually scares me a little bit because that's what we were, in fact, trying to get ahead of," Bacon said.
Bacon outlined specific worries about potential civil rights violations.
"We had a lot of conversations about how law enforcement cannot use it to profile, how law enforcement cannot use it to circumvent due process, how law enforcement cannot use it to circumvent First Amendment rights," she said.
She emphasized the need for safeguards given the high stakes involved.
"When you get it wrong, people's due process are violated," Bacon said. "We're talking about jail time, we're talking about how much one earns. We're talking about if someone can rent an apartment, and so we want to be sure that we can protect our communities from bad decisions."
She questioned underlying assumptions and bias built into artificial intelligence systems too.
"How does one determine what an illegal immigrant looks like or is?" Bacon said. "In America we believe in innocence before proven guilty and so the tools that we have need to also act upon those values as well," she said.
Federal regulation of facial recognition technology differs significantly from state oversight though.
"That's why the states are worried about it," Beaty said.
Beaty noted that this particular software has been used by sheriff's departments elsewhere in the country, primarily as a way to help run jails.
But he raised questions about data handling and privacy protections.
"Let's say my iris is taken and I haven't committed a felony, which I have not," he said. "Where does the data go?Does it stay on the phone? And how long will it be on the phone?"
He highlighted a key concern with biometric data collection.
"Another concern about all biometrics is it's something we cannot change," Beaty said. "Our fingerprints, our faces in general, certainly irises, retinas, we can't change. If it is misreported, then we have a huge problem," he said.
The mobile software from BI2 Technologies can identify individuals from 10 to 15 inches away using a smartphone app, according to the the Massachusetts-based company. It then connects with a second product that includes a database.
ICE posted a Wednesday announcement for a sole source purchase order to BI2 Technologies for licenses to both BI2's Inmate Recognition & Identification System and the Mobile Offender Recognition & Identification System for "enforcement and removal operations."
Steve Beaty, a computer science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, explained iris biometric capabilities.
"In general, it's quite accurate," Beaty said. "The iris is the part of your eye that everybody sees — the color has stripes in it and they are unique to an individual."
Beaty said recent technological advances have made iris scanning more accessible and affordable.
"The innovation is now that it's much less expensive that it can be done on less expensive devices such as phones," Beaty said. "In the past it was kind of a big standalone machine that these sorts of things could be used on."
The system compares iris scans to existing databases of photos. Beaty says that can come from a criminal database or even from photos scraped from social media profiles.
"Facial recognition companies have scraped the internet for photos," Beaty said.
But in Colorado, law enforcement agencies couldn't use the technology the same.
Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Bacon co-sponsored a 2022 Colorado law requiring police agencies to disclose their facial recognition plans and prohibiting its use as the sole basis for arrests or investigations.
"The way that we saw facial recognition working was with one to identify and match, versus profiling," Bacon said. "That's two different things."
She expressed concerns about ICE's intended use.
"The notion that ICE is going to use it to do some of those things actually scares me a little bit because that's what we were, in fact, trying to get ahead of," Bacon said.
Bacon outlined specific worries about potential civil rights violations.
"We had a lot of conversations about how law enforcement cannot use it to profile, how law enforcement cannot use it to circumvent due process, how law enforcement cannot use it to circumvent First Amendment rights," she said.
She emphasized the need for safeguards given the high stakes involved.
"When you get it wrong, people's due process are violated," Bacon said. "We're talking about jail time, we're talking about how much one earns. We're talking about if someone can rent an apartment, and so we want to be sure that we can protect our communities from bad decisions."
She questioned underlying assumptions and bias built into artificial intelligence systems too.
"How does one determine what an illegal immigrant looks like or is?" Bacon said. "In America we believe in innocence before proven guilty and so the tools that we have need to also act upon those values as well," she said.
Federal regulation of facial recognition technology differs significantly from state oversight though.
"That's why the states are worried about it," Beaty said.
Beaty noted that this particular software has been used by sheriff's departments elsewhere in the country, primarily as a way to help run jails.
But he raised questions about data handling and privacy protections.
"Let's say my iris is taken and I haven't committed a felony, which I have not," he said. "Where does the data go?Does it stay on the phone? And how long will it be on the phone?"
He highlighted a key concern with biometric data collection.
"Another concern about all biometrics is it's something we cannot change," Beaty said. "Our fingerprints, our faces in general, certainly irises, retinas, we can't change. If it is misreported, then we have a huge problem," he said.
Submission + - Trump lays bare Europe's weakness in just six months (elpais.com)
fjo3 writes: The US president has taken advantage of Europe’s geostrategic and economic vulnerability to strike a one-way trade deal and impose spending of 5% of GDP on defense.
Submission + - Peak Energy just shipped the US's first grid-scale sodium-ion battery (electrek.co)
AmiMoJo writes: Peak Energy shipped out its first sodium-ion battery energy storage system, and the New York-based company says it’s achieved a first in three ways: the US’s first grid-scale sodium-ion battery storage system; the largest sodium-ion phosphate pyrophosphate (NFPP) battery system in the world; and the first megawatt-hour scale battery to run entirely on passive cooling – no fans, pumps, or vents.
That’s significant because removing moving parts and ditching active cooling systems eliminates fire risk. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, 89% of battery fires in the US trace back to thermal management issues. Peak’s design doesn’t have those issues because it doesn’t have those systems.
Instead, the 3.5 MWh system uses a patent-pending passive cooling architecture that’s simpler, more reliable, and cheaper to run and maintain. The company says its technology slashes auxiliary power needs by up to 90%, saves about $1 million annually per gigawatt hour of storage, and cuts battery degradation by 33% over a 20-year lifespan.
That’s significant because removing moving parts and ditching active cooling systems eliminates fire risk. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, 89% of battery fires in the US trace back to thermal management issues. Peak’s design doesn’t have those issues because it doesn’t have those systems.
Instead, the 3.5 MWh system uses a patent-pending passive cooling architecture that’s simpler, more reliable, and cheaper to run and maintain. The company says its technology slashes auxiliary power needs by up to 90%, saves about $1 million annually per gigawatt hour of storage, and cuts battery degradation by 33% over a 20-year lifespan.
Submission + - Commodore 64 Ultimate: BASIC Beige (commodore.net) 2
alternative_right writes: The first official Commodore 64 in over 30 years is here — a faithful recreation of the original motherboard on FPGA hardware.
Comment The confusion didn't help. (Score 1) 117
That there was a file system. AND A caching system with more or less the same name. Bcache and Bcachefs
The former being a way to semi speed up raid array's with a cache ssd.
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