I can imagine Apple later removing the "paste anyway" option and requiring you to go to Settings > Privacy to confirm the action, like how they've done with running apps downloaded off of the internet
It's a function implemented in the shipped terminal.app. If you use a third party terminal app, it won't have the protection. Chances are if you're using a third party terminal you're probably sophisticated enough to not blindly run shell commands
Why is it the business of my OS vendor how old I am?
Because it's an alternative to websites asking your age.
The option is the website could verify your age. Or it could hand it off to the OS to handle that part. (Its not like there isn't precedent - things like passkeys and video decoding are passed from the browser to the OS).
If the OS handles it, great. The age verification gate is passed and you can do whatever you're allowed to.
Else, well, you then need to submit 2 pieces of ID to the website to prove your age where that personal information will be stored for an indefinite period of time on an insecure server waiting for someone to hack it.
OSes from Apple, Microsoft and Google pretty much know your age. This lets sites do the age verification check without you have to lift a finger. Of course, a certain other popular OS is not mentioned. For those wanting to "fight the system", chances are you'll just be like those using a VPN hitting CloudFlare protected sites. Either having to submit ID, or the site refusing you entry because they don't want to hold onto people's ID.
Of course, the better idea is to fix the legislation but that would likely push age verification back to the site and ID submissions. So maybe the better solution is to fix the legislation so sites don't have to check ages and just not do dark pattern stuff.
You also forgot things like virtual memory - both in separating process address spaces and in using disk as memory, protected memory, memory management, and all leading up to virtual machines (partitions) letting you run multiple OSes on the same machine.
Some of IBM's latest mainframes are just wild in their I/O and interconnects. Even the CPU specs are just strange and off the charts.
About the most annoying this about IBM is that their names for stuff like this doesn't match what most people would call the technology today - they have a totally different set of jargon for computing that's basically completely different from what people who didn't grow up with IBM computing had. I know at least one difference that tripped people up - bit 0 is the LSB in basically all of modern computing. Escept it's the MSB for IBM CPUs, and it tripped up people when it made it to consumer stuff like PowerPC. I know the first few PowerPC boards we had needed a re-spin because the hardware engineer messed up the bit orders.
Well no Switch 2 or PS5 for me. Going to stick with my Switch 1 until things settle down.
The Switch 2 is probably one you might want to get sooner rather than later (i.e., before Nintendo jacks up the price - they haven't yet).
Even if all you do with it is play Switch 1 games as memory bandwidth problems with the Switch 1 meant many games were stuck at sub-30 FPS and basically unplayable. The Switch 2 runs them at a buttery smooth 60 FPS locked which turns your games into something actually fun to play.
It's not just that the Switch 2 is faster, it's that the Switch 2 fixed a number of bottlenecks with the Tegra chip so Switch 1 games no longer ended up with sub 30 FPS or such.
The PS5 can be held off especially if you have a PS4 as there's nothing really that's PS5 only that isn't already on PS4.
But going from the Switch 1 to the Switch 2 is well worth the upgrade price especially as later games just couldn't do 30 FPS.
Chips aren't magic. In fact, they're one of the worst things in the world, because they're extremely proprietary. As in each vet has to have a scanner capable of reading each manufacturer's chip
They can detect the presence of a chip, but if they don't have the right reader, it doesn't read. And that gets you an ID number, it has to be looked up in the manufacturer's database.
That's why when that chip manufacturer went bankrupt, they told everyone they had to get their pets re-chipped with a new one, because their chip will no longer have the database backing it up.
Also, if you move, you need to update the manufacturer with your new details - how many pets have chips but their details were not updated so it was not possible to contact the original owner.
Or even worse, because chips are proprietary, they simply couldn't read the chip at all. Each reader is for one manufacturer so vets typically only carry a couple of readers.
Chips do help, as do tattoos. But also make sure they have ID tags on their collars - dog licenses, rabies tags, and AirTags can all ID your pet provided they aren't separated from their collars. (Yeah, yeah, but it's possible to collar train your dog so they always wear them, and many of the nicer ones have built in AirTag pockets). They do make GPS trackers as well, but they're kind of large so it's only suitable for larger dogs.
There's plenty of ways to ID your pet. Use all of them - the dog license and rabies tags offer very up to date information on the owner since they're renewed annually. The AirTag can both let you leave contact information as well as help you track your pet. The chip and tattoo are there in case your pet manages to take off their collar (which they usually shouldn't if properly trained).
The laws in several countries are going to require it. My preferred way is for the OS to offer a flag of "This user is of legal age in this region based on information provided to the administrator of this computer." I'll leave it up to the people with compilers to comply or not with their local laws.
My proposal is stuff the flags in a sysctl user.$UID.age var. and then let the browser send info off to other sites just like it does with language selection. That way a pam module (or systemd) can set an over/under age of majority for the region and then let the browser send a "yes/no" flag. The pam module or sysd can calulate that based on a birthday or a +18 flag so you may have to log in to reset it but the birthdate is never sent to the browser let alone to the end web sites.
This gives schools a way to control content. It allows parents to control content. It allows home router vendors to claim to control content. It allows web sites to stop annoying users about being above 16,18 or 21 depending on what they are pushing. The politicians will look at it and say the industry is working with them while patting themselves on the back.
The other solution is let the politician's owners come up with a solution and that will be an expensive id solution that tracks everyone through the web with no way to opt out.
Reply "yes", then close and reopen this message to activate the link.
No matter how idiot-proof you make technology, God will always create a better idiot. That's why the right way to solve this problem is:
But IMO, the most important one is that last one. We would be a lot better off if the right to a speedy trial were taken seriously. If a year or more passes between committing a crime and being prosecuted, the threat of prosecution ceases to be a meaningful deterrent to crime.
If I were in charge, there would be two nationwide statutes of limitations added that apply to all crimes:
* I'm willing to consider arguments that these numbers should be slightly higher, but not dramatically so.
If legitimate extenuating circumstances outside the control of prosecution warrant a delay (e.g. the defendant being impossible to locate or in another country), a judge could order the statute of limitations tolled. But otherwise, the only exceptions should be in situations where a mistrial or similar forces a new trial (which obviously starts more than 30 days after the initial charges are filed). And even for a retrial, there should be a hard limit of maybe 90 days from the end of the previous trial or thereabouts.
This would result in a very large number of cases not getting prosecuted, but by forcing the prosecution to triage cases and bring important cases quickly, it would ensure that fear of being brought to justice would be a real deterrent to committing crimes. Right now, it is not. Good people don't (intentionally) commit crimes, because they have morality and ethics. Bad people do, because they have neither. Almost nobody avoids doing crime merely out of fear of punishment, and that's a bad thing.
We are obligated to ignore stupid laws. To mock them, to flaunt them and ultimately get them removed.
We are not sheep.
Celebrating someone's death is low-class.
Making a death threat is a crime. There is a difference.
I am strongly opposed to age verification.
However, given that the developer faced (according to the article) "harassment, doxxing, death threats, and a flood of hate mail", maybe we need some form of maturity verification? There's no call for that sort of crap. And I really hope that criminal charges are filed against anyone sending death threats.
Errr no, they very much do make technology. Quite a bit of it actually. Lots of what is marketed under Dolby Vision and Dolby Audio was developed by themselves and they spend a quarter of a billion dollar every year on R&D. Heck even the noise cancelling ability in video conferencing software along with music detection was largely developed by Dolby.
I would still consider them patent trolls at this point. Legitimate patent holders use patents immediately or hold them to use defensively. They do not sit on patents for an entire decade, waiting for the patented technology to be ingrained in the industry, and then use them to earn income. The patent having been created in-house rather than acquired doesn't change the fact that the behavior is fundamentally similar.
Just because you don't see their products on the shelves at Best Buy doesn't mean they don't make those either. They produce reference monitors for colour grading Dolby Vision content, they have an entire line of cinema audio speakers, and they make the rest of the cinema audio stack as well as a first party product, including multichannel amplifiers and audio pre-processors for Atmos content - a codec they also developed from the ground up.
Dolby Atmos was 2012. Dolby Vision was 2014. How are they not basically a non-practicing entity at this point?
The fact they sit on a bunch of related patents is just the nature of any R&D development.
Yes, but using them offensively after sitting on them violates the doctrine of Laches. In effect, they sat on the patents so that people would end up depending on AV1, because if they sued too early, AOMedia would have designed around the patent, and they would get nothing. So they deliberately delayed action to cause prejudice to the defendant.
At this point, it would be entirely reasonable for a judge to declare that because they failed to act against AOMedia within the 6-year window prescribed by patent law, they lost their right to sue AOMedia for damages in creating the patented technology, and that patent exhaustion applies to all downstream users. And if that happens, I will laugh so hard.
Imagine your little startup patents something and is egregious copied by a large, rich company. If the startup doesn't immediately have the funds to sue, the other company just gets to use the tech without the patent with no consequences. Seems unfair.
Dolby is not a startup. It was founded in 1965.
Also, the doctrine of Laches says you cannot unreasonably delay filing a lawsuit. Waiting ten years from the first release of the specification is clearly unreasonable. Waiting eight years from the first finished implementation is clearly unreasonable.
The bigger problem for Dolby is that patent law won't let you recover damages at all for damages more than six years ago, and the standard has been available for eight. So unless somehow this is some wacky patent where Dolby claims that some use of an otherwise non-patent-protected codec is patented (which should almost certainly result in that patent getting overturned for obviousness), Dolby should be laughed out of court.
But I'm sure they're hoping that Snapchat caves and agrees to go back to a Dolby codec or pay them royalties rather than fight them in court. This is patent troll behavior. Dolby has effectively become a patent troll, IMO.
Unfortunately, from a legal point of view, AOMedia hasn't done anything against Dolby. It's simply created a video compression codec. It doesn't use the codec, it just publishes documentation on how to use it.
From a patent law point of view, it is illegal to create something that violates a patent, not just to use it. Patent law kicks in when you create, offer for sale, sell, import, or otherwise distribute a patented invention.
IMO, one of the biggest flaws in patent law is that it covers the use of inventions in all cases except for patent exhaustion (sale of an already-licensed product). With the exception of pure process patents, IMO, that should not be a violation, as a user has no realistic way of knowing that something they bought violates someone else's patent, and should not even need to worry about such nonsense.
This "feature" of patent law exists solely to give the patent holder more leverage to screw the company accused of violating the patent by holding their innocently infringing customers liable, causing irreparable reputational damage to both companies, irreparable harm to countless others, etc., and it should have been eliminated decades ago.
That said, having seen this behavior by Dolby, I hereby vow to never knowingly buy any product that they manufacture, nor support their products or technology, nor use it except in situations where the content creator or distributor leaves me no alternative. They've gone from being a legitimate technology company to a glorified patent troll. Instead of innovating and making the world better to enrich themselves, they are suing anybody and everybody and making the world worse to enrich themselves.
Moreover, absent gross incompetence by Dolby's legal counsel, it seems clear that Dolby flagrantly and willfully violated the doctrine of Laches to allow damages to accumulate for eight full years from the final release (and ten years from the first specification release), thus allowing AV1 to become the dominant codec so that they could then predatorily use their patents to squeeze money out of the industry. Their behavior is nothing short of unconscionable, and whether due to incompetence or malice, their legal counsel should be formally sanctioned for it.
Finally, if Dolby wins, it is paramount that the entire technology industry agree to never license *any* future Dolby technologies going forwards, because doing so will only encourage them to use the patent system to prevent free and open standards. The only way to prevent patent abuse is to stop feeding the companies that abuse patents.
It is my fundamental believe that data formats should not be allowed to be protected by copyright or patents under any circumstances, because doing so fundamentally violates the rights of the owners and creators of that content. It makes it so that users can potentially lose access to data that they created. And this is wholly unacceptable for the same reason that renting software is unacceptable.
In short, Dolby and its lawyers can go f**k themselves with a shovel.
Kill Ugly Processor Architectures - Karl Lehenbauer
