Comment Re:Apple should bring back Boot Camp (Score 1) 71
But that was for Windows. Also, it can't even support Windows 11 in old Intel MBPs.
Comment Re:The last MacBook was released in 2020 (Score 1) 122
Thanks God I bought the last Intel MBP. I wanted to BootCamp and put Linux on it. Sure there's Linux for M series, but it is not ready.
Comment I care not about AI! (Score 1) 40
I turned those off in mine!
Submission + - Microsoft Deliberately Bricking All Office for Mac 2019/2021 Installations (osnews.com) 2
joshuark writes: MacOS users who opted to buy a copy of Microsoft Office for macOS back in 2019 or 2021, eschewing the Office 365 subscription, so you could keep on using Office 2019/2021 forever if you wanted to. Just like in the old days.
Consumer Rights Wiki reports:
"Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion (2026) is a scheduled remote degradation of perpetually-licensed Microsoft Office software for macOS and iOS, set for July 13, 2026 when a license-validation certificate used by the Office apps expires.[1] After Office 2019 for Mac reached end of support in October 2023, Microsoft assured customers their installed apps would "continue to function."[2] The July 13, 2026 conversion instead drops the apps into a Microsoft-defined "reduced functionality mode," in which files can be opened and viewed but not edited or saved.[1][3] By May 30, 2026, the original 2023 end-of-support page had been re-dated and rewritten on Microsoft's site; the "continue to function" clause was removed.[4][2]" https://consumerrights.wiki/w/...
Microsoft’s advice to the users they’re stealing from is to keep using the applications as mere viewers, switch to the free Office 365 web applications, pay for a 365 subscription, or buy a brand new regular copy of Office 2024. None of these make any sense, and clearly, all of this should be illegal, but it’s not because the software industry is a clown show.
Consumer Rights Wiki reports:
"Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion (2026) is a scheduled remote degradation of perpetually-licensed Microsoft Office software for macOS and iOS, set for July 13, 2026 when a license-validation certificate used by the Office apps expires.[1] After Office 2019 for Mac reached end of support in October 2023, Microsoft assured customers their installed apps would "continue to function."[2] The July 13, 2026 conversion instead drops the apps into a Microsoft-defined "reduced functionality mode," in which files can be opened and viewed but not edited or saved.[1][3] By May 30, 2026, the original 2023 end-of-support page had been re-dated and rewritten on Microsoft's site; the "continue to function" clause was removed.[4][2]" https://consumerrights.wiki/w/...
Microsoft’s advice to the users they’re stealing from is to keep using the applications as mere viewers, switch to the free Office 365 web applications, pay for a 365 subscription, or buy a brand new regular copy of Office 2024. None of these make any sense, and clearly, all of this should be illegal, but it’s not because the software industry is a clown show.
Comment "Hi Jack! (Score 1) 164
Try saying that.
Submission + - New Lawsuit Against Amazon: 'Subscribe and Save' Program Actually Costs You More (msn.com)
destinyland writes: A married couple claims in a new lawsuit that Amazon duped them — and leagues of other U.S. customers — into signing up for its popular "Subscribe & Save" program under the guise that they'd save money on automatically recurring purchases... In some cases, the lawsuit claims that customers were paying more for the exact same items through the Subscribe & Save program than they would be if they bought the items from other sellers on the site. That was true even when the up to 15% discount that the subscription program offers was calculated into the final purchase price, according to the suit. The Seattle law firm that filed the May 15 lawsuit says that Amazon’s business practices amount to “deceptive,” “misleading” and “bait and switch tactics.” The firm is seeking class-action status in U.S. District Court for western Washington, a move that could potentially draw tens of millions of Amazon customers from across the U.S. into the litigation...
[The suit says the plaintiffs' first order of espresso coffee grounds was $16.60.] When their order auto-renewed a few months later, the price had gone up to $17.04. A few months later, it rose to $21.25. Then in October 2024, the price increased to $28.69 — about $12 more than the Hermans had paid at the beginning of their subscription, according to the lawsuit. [The discount can be as little as 5% or up to 15%, Amazon told Oregon Live in a statement, noting customers do receive an email showing "applicable savings" before the orders ship. But...] The suit says Amazon gave the Hermans little notice to cancel the order or to shop around because it notified them of the latest price increase in an email at 8:54 p.m. — the same night it processed their order and charged them.
The suit says if the Hermans had been given the time to shop around for a better price, they would have found that another Amazon seller was charging $25.90 — or $2.79 less — for the identical item. Amazon’s “Subscribe & Save Terms & Conditions” page tells customers that it “may change the price for a Subscribe & Save subscription at any time for any reason....”
The analytical group Consumer Intelligence Research Partners says about 25% of U.S. Amazon customers are enrolled in the Subscribe & Save program.
[The suit says the plaintiffs' first order of espresso coffee grounds was $16.60.] When their order auto-renewed a few months later, the price had gone up to $17.04. A few months later, it rose to $21.25. Then in October 2024, the price increased to $28.69 — about $12 more than the Hermans had paid at the beginning of their subscription, according to the lawsuit. [The discount can be as little as 5% or up to 15%, Amazon told Oregon Live in a statement, noting customers do receive an email showing "applicable savings" before the orders ship. But...] The suit says Amazon gave the Hermans little notice to cancel the order or to shop around because it notified them of the latest price increase in an email at 8:54 p.m. — the same night it processed their order and charged them.
The suit says if the Hermans had been given the time to shop around for a better price, they would have found that another Amazon seller was charging $25.90 — or $2.79 less — for the identical item. Amazon’s “Subscribe & Save Terms & Conditions” page tells customers that it “may change the price for a Subscribe & Save subscription at any time for any reason....”
The analytical group Consumer Intelligence Research Partners says about 25% of U.S. Amazon customers are enrolled in the Subscribe & Save program.
Comment Marcia Lucas Finally Speaks Out | Icons Unearthed (Score 1) 22
Nacelle Company posted this four months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Comment Re:Always surprised that facebook still exists. (Score 1) 52
Lots of people still use it.
Comment Re:Advances (Score 1) 29
Which hearing aid brand and model is that?
Comment What about alumnus? (Score 1) 32
Will that work?
Submission + - Tesla imports $29,000 USD ($39,490CAD) Chinese made Model 3 Premium to Canada
ArmoredDragon writes: After Canada dropped its 106.1% tariff on Chinese imports to 6.1%, (which is Canada's standard tariff rate for most favored nations) and raised 25% tariffs against the United States, Tesla moved its inventory manufactured in Fremont, CA back to the US and began importing its Shanghai produced Model 3 to take advantage of the lower rates. This presented a problem for the Canadian government, which currently has a 49,000 unit cap for Chinese vehicle imports, as Tesla already had all the necessary infrastructure in place to begin shipping and distributing cars, where the Chinese competitors such as BYD do not. By becoming the first mover, Tesla would consume most or all of the 49,000 cap before any other competitors have a chance to sell any units.
It's worth emphasizing that this is the premium version of the Model 3, not the newer but lower cost Standard version. It also appears to be made to the same specification as Tesla vehicles that were already being sold in Canada, including using the US EPA standards for EV range estimates, as opposed to the more internationally used WLTC or NEDC standards, or even the Chinese CLTC standard. Deliveries are expected to begin no later than June.
It's worth emphasizing that this is the premium version of the Model 3, not the newer but lower cost Standard version. It also appears to be made to the same specification as Tesla vehicles that were already being sold in Canada, including using the US EPA standards for EV range estimates, as opposed to the more internationally used WLTC or NEDC standards, or even the Chinese CLTC standard. Deliveries are expected to begin no later than June.
Submission + - Chrome silent install of 4GB AI model without consent gets expensive. (thatprivacyguy.com)
couchslug writes: Widespread unasked for downloads devour bandwidth squandering energy:
From the parent article:
"Two weeks ago I wrote about Anthropic silently registering a Native Messaging bridge in seven Chromium-based browsers on every machine where Claude Desktop was installed [1]. The pattern was: install on user launch of product A, write configuration into the user's installs of products B, C, D, E, F, G, H without asking. Reach across vendor trust boundaries. No consent dialog. No opt-out UI. Re-installs itself if the user removes it manually, every time Claude Desktop is launched.
This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking. The file is named weights.bin. It lives in OptGuideOnDeviceModel. It is the weights for Gemini Nano, Google's on-device LLM. Chrome did not ask. Chrome does not surface it. If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it.
The legal analysis is the same one I gave for the Anthropic case. The environmental analysis is new. At Chrome's scale, the climate bill for one model push, paid in atmospheric CO2 by the entire planet, is between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push. That is the environmental cost of one company unilaterally deciding that two billion peoples' default browser will mass-distribute a 4 GB binary they did not request."
From the parent article:
"Two weeks ago I wrote about Anthropic silently registering a Native Messaging bridge in seven Chromium-based browsers on every machine where Claude Desktop was installed [1]. The pattern was: install on user launch of product A, write configuration into the user's installs of products B, C, D, E, F, G, H without asking. Reach across vendor trust boundaries. No consent dialog. No opt-out UI. Re-installs itself if the user removes it manually, every time Claude Desktop is launched.
This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking. The file is named weights.bin. It lives in OptGuideOnDeviceModel. It is the weights for Gemini Nano, Google's on-device LLM. Chrome did not ask. Chrome does not surface it. If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it.
The legal analysis is the same one I gave for the Anthropic case. The environmental analysis is new. At Chrome's scale, the climate bill for one model push, paid in atmospheric CO2 by the entire planet, is between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push. That is the environmental cost of one company unilaterally deciding that two billion peoples' default browser will mass-distribute a 4 GB binary they did not request."
Comment VGA... (Score 1) 30
... I still use it esp. with my OmniCube KVM from Y2K!
Comment Re:OCR struggled? (Score 2) 47
Did they not use a slash in zeros to avoid confusions?
Submission + - Should schools get rid of homework? Some educators are saying yes (npr.org)
Tony Isaac writes: Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade.
Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.
Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.
Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.
Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.
Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.
Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.
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