.... how Gen Z and general idiots dont seem to have figured out that if you turn your phone by 90 degrees then it records in landscape mode. Theres a reason TV and film are recorded that way - that's how we see the world. Our eyes are side by side, not above and below.

Have you walked around with your phone in your hand? Your phone is most likely in portrait orientation while you do this as it lets you operate it single-handedly. If you watch people, they're doing stuff on their phones, including watching video in portrait orientation. Turning their phone just makes it really inconvenient to use single-handed.

What is the historical average rate of truck freight theft?

This headline sounds like an Oceans Eleven fantasy. The actual article more mundane than the headline. But the story is still interesting and oddly sophisticated for truck freight theft. Despite that, I have a nagging feeling that this isn't really novel or an increase and that it is being reported simply because data centers are the current news cycle.

Trailer theft is a huge thing. Drivers may have parked their rigs on the side of the highway and then woken up to their trailer missing.

Most trailers contain between $20-100K worth of goods, the more expensive ones may have just shy of half a million dollars worth of freight. But that's rare.

But with the AI hype, trailers containing servers, RAM, etc, which may have cost $300K a few years ago now costs over a million dollars. And with the demand, it's fairly easy to fence.

You might steal a trailer that is full of nickels. But now you need to somehow get rid of $50K worth of nickels. (That's a million nickels). Just think how difficult a mission that is.

But computer servers? Much easier thanks to demand, and you likely can get close to retail prices.

SystemD isn't a monolithic application. It's a collection of utilities that all share the SystemD banner. You can pick and choose what bits of the SystemD utility set you wish to use. It is entirely possible to not use the init portion but use the system logging daemon, for example. Or other bits and pieces.

In fact, there's no distribution out there that uses everything SystemD has to offer. Most use a majority of the components, but there's often a few that are not used. systemd-networkd versus Network Manager versus interfaces, for example to manage network interfaces.

I think there was also talk of SystemD trying to replace dbus as well, but not getting any traction on that.

Heck, I think there was one now-deprecated component of KDE that was dependent on one SystemD utility that was Linux-specific. It got dropped over a more generic version that used more portable components.

When I was in university, homework was at most 10% of your grade. The midterm exam was often worth 45%, and the final the other 45%. Often with the stipulation that you must pass the final to pass the course.

I had classes where homework was assigned but not graded. It was obvious who did the homework and who didn't - you just didn't do very well on the final or midterm if you didn't do the optional homework.

Everyone's an adult. You don't do the assigned homework at your own risk, even if it isn't graded. Midterms and final exam correspond to the biggest influence on your grade.

Heck, sometimes the midterm mark can be dropped as well - I've had plenty of professors simply say because we scored badly on the midterms, they'll use the final exam mark if we do better. So if you scored a 30% on the midterm but then get an 80% on the exam, you get an 80% on the class.

Stop the coddling and just treat everyone as an adult. Assign homework, but don't mark it. You can ask if people had a problem they got stuck on so they could work it out as part of the lecture, but not part of the grade. The final grade you get depends solely on the midterm and/or the final exam.

(I got a D on a class where I didn't do the homework. The second semester the followup course I did the homework and got an A-)

That would have been really useful for some mag tape systems I used to use. They had too many errors for their error correction system.

You should do it for backup systems. It's why PAR2 exists. You run it over your data and it creates the Reed-Solomon parity files. Each file contains a checksum of every file in the set, and you need only enough parity file to fix the corruption. E.g., if you have a 1MB block that's corrupted, you just need a 1MB parity file. The files often come in varying sizes so you just use as much as you need.

There's lots of programs able to handle the PAR2 format and it's been around for decades.

RS codes are awesome in that you only need parity enough to cover the damage - you can generate parity files all the way up to 100% - which in theory if they only thing that survives are parity files, you can reconstitute the original files still.

If half the data is corrupted, and half of the 100% parity is corrupted, the remaining 50% of each is enough to rebuild

I hope that this gets patched soon so that I can continue browsing my favorite government websites.

A large number of sites are down. Among more /. crowd would be GoG and Steam for the same reason.

The only really good news is a lot of people are taking it seriously still and not just leaving something vulnerable up. Hopefully sites remaining down will alert others to update their PHP.

Does it matter what the authorities claim to be looking for?

The answer should always be "Do you have a warrant?" followed by invoking your right not to answer any of their questions.

You may still be arrested even if you've done nothing wrong, but your attorney will have a much easier time getting charges dismissed (and filing suit against the authorities for civil rights violations) if you don't willingly give the authorities anything with which they might convict you.

CBP doesn't have that. If you're a citizen (and white/etc) they must let you pass through onto US soil. But they don't have to let you through with your possessions. They are free to seize them and hold them while you fight to get them back.

They don't need a warrant for any of this.

If you're a non-citizen, non-white or minority US citizen, well, they can put you back on a plane or detain you. If you're lucky, they'll put you on a plane. If not, you'll get put into one of those immigration prisons and held until they can verify your identity months later.

Meanwhile you'll be without your stuff for years. Meanwhile thye'll probably be downloading and searching it.

Why would this have been getting use with Federal Agencies already? Seems like the Federal government has been left to be the wild west in terms of what AI systems to use and how to use them. Have we been letting agencies use a Chinese developed AI system for the better part of a year?/blockquote

Because it's one of the better open models out there. If you want to self-host your own AI models, there aren't a lot out there that aren't Chinese originated.

The rest you have to use hosted models from OpenAI, Anthropic and such and they demand fees and such.

Then again, it's likely less about Chinese models and more about funneling taxpayer money to billionaires again.

Generally speaking the problem with Apple is the magnitude of orders.

OLEDs on laptops is generally an option on the higher end laptops - they default to standard TFT displays and reserve the OLEDs as an upgrade option This means the companies don't really need all that many OLED panels.

Apple though, sells only a few models of laptops, and generally on such a scale that they may need millions of OLED displays. The problem is the supply chain may not be big enough to make that many OLED panels that Apple needs. The last thing Apple wants is a shortage and being supply constrained. Apple likely had to wait until their suppliers could supply the millions of panels that Apple would need.

Of course, there's potentially a software issue, but a lot of OLED laptops don't really have much OLED specific software. I know my Carbon X1 doesn't really have anything to manage the OLED other than dimming the taskbar or background windows.

1 share is very hard to sell.
Neither one of these plans is anything but a publicity stunt and a tax dodge. Musk's stupid idea doesn't work well as a tax dodge though. How does one distribute 1 share to tens of millions of kids who don't have bank accounts much less brokerage accounts? Is he going to mail them out as paper shares, to be stored in a photo album for the next 20 years?

Not it isn't. You can buy and sell shares in 1 share increments. It's not hard to do it.

It can take a little bit of time if you insist on selling for a specific price, but if you do a market trade it'll happen basically instantly. SpaceX has enough trades happening that there will likely be people who are willing to accept partially fulfilled orders.

The only issue there can be with trading single shares is the brokerage fees involved, but discount brokerages and the like exist.

Why did this Mr. Torres (Democrat from NY -- That part is important) leave this out? Is it because the film industry is all democrat and the tech industry is libertarian? Can't be.

Or maybe because it isn't needed? Movies and music are available in a format you own.

For music - they're basically all DRM free so you buy it you own it. You can also buy it on CD, vinyl, cassette tape or other formats.

For movies, well, you can still buy DVDs and Blu-Rays, and you buy those you own them.

For videogames, other than GoG, that doesn't exist. You buy PC games with the courtesy from Valve/Steam, Epic, Microsoft, Sony, etc. If they say you aren't allowed to play the game anymore, they can block you from playing it.

But with my CDs, purchased music, DVDs and Blu-Rays, no one can prevent me from watching it.

Especially anything long form. And they know it and they could care less about the quality of it. What they're upset about is that if their platform becomes completely full of AI slop they won't be able to monetize the posts by selling them as training data.

No, I'm sure there's plenty of people who do read long form posts - usually the ones who write long form posts.

You have to remember there are a number of people who spend their time on LinkedIn - recruiters, C-suite folks, etc. It's why the long form ports are usually some self-flagellation along the lines of "why doesn't anyone want to work anymore?" or "how to screw over your employees".

Either ram upgrades are still easy to accomplish -OR- 'dodgy hardware resellers' will no longer be able to continue installing bad ram. You cannot have both.

RAM upgrades on a RPi are REALLY hard. You need to have certain hardware and skills to do it. The people who can do it, can also make a killing "upgrading" RAM by using cheap low-quality RAM and selling the new Pi as a more expensive one. The price difference is about $260 from RPi 5 with 1GB to one with 16GB. ($45 for 1GB, $305 for 16GB). If you come across a supply of cheap 16GB units for say, $100 each, you can make a healthy profit selling RPis for $305 that you paid only $145 for. That's $160 in profit and if you have all the equipment to do so, likely takes well under 15 minutes each to do.

The people will the skills to do this easily are also the ones who can acquire everything cheaply - China, for example, would have all the necessary equipment to make it.

You can also get "no warranty" RPis officially - they're the "industrial" model and are not for retail sale. (Many pieces of hardware use RPis internally for their controllers because it saves having to deal with SoC manufacturers and such to design the hardware when it's readily available). That's usually how those factories can get a ready supply of RPis for cheap - an industrial RPi 5 1GB would likely be under $40 or so in quantity.

And now you're counterfeiting Pis.

The FSF is right to criticize RPi for this, because it goes against their principles, but the FSF also has to realize that counterfeit hardware is a real thing, and an RPi with swapped memory not officially made by RPi is a counterfeit. It's one of the annoyances of real life - counterfeits are a real thing and countermeasures to that usually end up taking rights away. I mean, I'm sure all the pro Right to Repair folks would be glad if their names were put on counterfeit stuff, right? Perhaps someone selling cheap batteries with the iFixit logo. The FSF is harder to counter since their products are purely software, but I'm sure they've been burned before when they buy a product only to realize that the new revision was incompatible.

Don't think of ETS as some victim because they're a not-for-profit. Like the College Board they own the market on standardized tests. Heck a quarter of their business comes from administering College Board tests. Basically every student in the world will have to encounter something from either company just as a matter of course, especially if they wish to enter a western college or university. And the tests aren't cheap.

They're companies that basically rake in tons of money they have to spend because they need to bring the profit to zero. They can spend that money on top grade security if they wanted to because they're not hurting for cash. College Board owns a bunch of luxury hotels because they've got nothing else to spend money on. ETS compensates their C suite very well just to spend money.

They would have no trouble buying high end security systems and subscriptions and everything and still not make a dent in their executive compensation.

If the optics weren't so bad for them, they likely could pay for a new ballroom in short order.

Are gamers really interested in achievements? I almost never see anyone discuss video game achievements. To me, achievements are mostly distracting and cringe, with their pop-up notifications and poor attempts at being witty. A transparent attempt to force engagement and replay value.

There are people in my friend group who are completely into achievements. If they don't get the "100% completed" achievement (got all the achievements) they feel like something is unfinished. They will gather friends around for multiplayer sessions to get multiplayer achievements. Some even go so far as to scan the list of achievements to see what they need to complete them before they start the game (or not, if they feel something might take a lot of time and/or effort - the The Stanley Parable one about waiting 10 years or something).

Others I've found play Xbox GamePass games in the most "optimal" pattern to get achievements the quickest with the fewest replays.

Then there are people like me who don't really care because there are achievements I know I'll never get, so it doesn't bother me because I don't have the time, skill or patience to bother.

Achievements were something baked into the Xbox360 from the start, it took Sony a few years before they implemented a similar system for hte PS3 (calling them trophies). I remember seeing a Red vs. Blue thing about the Xbox360 and new features and showing off the achievements.