Comment Did they give up on blocking uBlock? (Score 1) 205
Interestingly, YouTube recently stopped updating their ad-block detection scripts. Maybe they've given up on uBlock and moved on to third-party apps?
Submission + - The Apple IIgs: On A Machine This Slow, You Had To Get Weird.
garote writes: It's the year 1991. You're a teenage computer geek.
You've just upgraded to an Apple IIgs, your first "16-bit" computer. To relieve the crushing boredom of your High School coursework, you and your friends embark on the computer geek equivalent of forming a heavy metal band: Making your own video game.
You meet at the benches during lunch hour, and pass around crude plans scribbled on graph paper. You assign each other impressive titles like "Master Programmer", "Sound Designer", and "Area Data Input". You swap 3.5" disks like furtive secret agents, and stay up coding untl 3am. Your parents look at your owlish eyes — and your slipping grades — and ask if you're "on drugs".
If that sounds familiar, this essay may prove interesting. It uses the game my friends and I started — but didn't finish — in High School over 30 years ago, to explore the absurd programming contortions we did to make it playable on the Apple IIgs: The red-headed stepchild of the Apple II line; a machine that languished for six years without a hardware upgrade to avoid competing with the Macintosh.
Thanks to the recent release of the first cycle-accurate emulator for this machine, you can actually play the game in all its screen-tearing glory. You can also explore the source code which has survived for 30 years, and been adapted to build on modern hardware thanks to Merlin32 and CiderPress II.
You've just upgraded to an Apple IIgs, your first "16-bit" computer. To relieve the crushing boredom of your High School coursework, you and your friends embark on the computer geek equivalent of forming a heavy metal band: Making your own video game.
You meet at the benches during lunch hour, and pass around crude plans scribbled on graph paper. You assign each other impressive titles like "Master Programmer", "Sound Designer", and "Area Data Input". You swap 3.5" disks like furtive secret agents, and stay up coding untl 3am. Your parents look at your owlish eyes — and your slipping grades — and ask if you're "on drugs".
If that sounds familiar, this essay may prove interesting. It uses the game my friends and I started — but didn't finish — in High School over 30 years ago, to explore the absurd programming contortions we did to make it playable on the Apple IIgs: The red-headed stepchild of the Apple II line; a machine that languished for six years without a hardware upgrade to avoid competing with the Macintosh.
Thanks to the recent release of the first cycle-accurate emulator for this machine, you can actually play the game in all its screen-tearing glory. You can also explore the source code which has survived for 30 years, and been adapted to build on modern hardware thanks to Merlin32 and CiderPress II.
Submission + - Google Adds New Developer Fees As Part of Play Store's DMA Compliance Plan (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google today is sharing more details about the fees that will accompany its plan to comply with Europe’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), the new regulation aimed at increasing competition across the app store ecosystem. While Google yesterday pointed to ways it already complied with the DMA — by allowing sideloading of apps, for example — it hadn’t yet shared specifics about the fees that would apply to developers, noting that further details would come out this week. That time is now, as it turns out.
Today, Google shared that there will be two fees that apply to its External offers program, also announced yesterday. This new program allows Play Store developers to lead their users in the EEA outside their app, including to promote offers. With these fees, Google is going the route of Apple, which reduced its App Store commissions in the EU to comply with the DMA but implemented a new Core Technology Fee that required developers to pay 0.50 euros for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold for apps distributed outside the App Store. Apple justified the fee by explaining that the services it provides developers extend beyond payment processing and include the work it does to support app creation and discovery, craft APIs, frameworks and tools to support developers’ app creation work, fight fraud and more.
Google is taking a similar tactic, saying today that “Google Play’s service fee has never been simply a fee for payment processing — it reflects the value provided by Android and Play and supports our continued investments across Android and Google Play, allowing for the user and developer features that people count on,” a blog post states. It says there will now be two fees that accompany External Offers program transactions:
— An initial acquisition fee, which is 10% for in-app purchases or 5% for subscriptions for two years. Google says this fee represents the value that Play provided in facilitating the initial user acquisition through the Play Store.
— An ongoing services fee, which is 17% for in-app purchases or 7% for subscriptions. This reflects the “broader value Play provides users and developers, including ongoing services such as parental controls, security scanning, fraud prevention, and continuous app updates,” writes Google.
Of note, a developer can opt out of the ongoing services and corresponding fees, if the user agrees, after two years. Users who initially installed the app believe they’ll have services like parental controls, security scanning, fraud prevention and continuous app updates, which is why opting out requires user consent. Although Google allows the developer to terminate this fee, those ongoing services will no longer apply either. Developers, however, will still be responsible for reporting transactions involving those users who are continuing to receive Play Store services.
Today, Google shared that there will be two fees that apply to its External offers program, also announced yesterday. This new program allows Play Store developers to lead their users in the EEA outside their app, including to promote offers. With these fees, Google is going the route of Apple, which reduced its App Store commissions in the EU to comply with the DMA but implemented a new Core Technology Fee that required developers to pay 0.50 euros for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold for apps distributed outside the App Store. Apple justified the fee by explaining that the services it provides developers extend beyond payment processing and include the work it does to support app creation and discovery, craft APIs, frameworks and tools to support developers’ app creation work, fight fraud and more.
Google is taking a similar tactic, saying today that “Google Play’s service fee has never been simply a fee for payment processing — it reflects the value provided by Android and Play and supports our continued investments across Android and Google Play, allowing for the user and developer features that people count on,” a blog post states. It says there will now be two fees that accompany External Offers program transactions:
— An initial acquisition fee, which is 10% for in-app purchases or 5% for subscriptions for two years. Google says this fee represents the value that Play provided in facilitating the initial user acquisition through the Play Store.
— An ongoing services fee, which is 17% for in-app purchases or 7% for subscriptions. This reflects the “broader value Play provides users and developers, including ongoing services such as parental controls, security scanning, fraud prevention, and continuous app updates,” writes Google.
Of note, a developer can opt out of the ongoing services and corresponding fees, if the user agrees, after two years. Users who initially installed the app believe they’ll have services like parental controls, security scanning, fraud prevention and continuous app updates, which is why opting out requires user consent. Although Google allows the developer to terminate this fee, those ongoing services will no longer apply either. Developers, however, will still be responsible for reporting transactions involving those users who are continuing to receive Play Store services.
Comment Re:Ideas for the next tulipmania (Score 1) 37
lol this was modded interesting. Is that you, Bob Iger?
Comment Nothing but lip service (Score 2) 20
YouTube doesn't even seem to care about all the blatantly fake clickbait thumbnails that have infested the site for years as it is. I'm sure they'll get right on properly moderating AI-generated content. /s
Comment Re:We're not talking about pricing (Score 1) 71
ACA pricing has never worked this way afaik. It limits the impact of age on premiums (people age 64 and older can't be charged more than 3x as much a 21-year-old), but each additional year absolutely will increase the premium. Maybe you're thinking of something else?
Comment Re:Mother May I..? (Score 3, Insightful) 170
The bill is explicitly limited to TikTok/ByteDance, so tinfoil hatting and casting this as some broad power grab (especially in light of Biden's recent executive order on the subject) seems disingenuous.
Alas, the bill the committee voted on today was H.R. 1153, not H.R. 503. I'd feel a lot better about it if it were limited to just Tiktok.
This bill is vague and overly broad to say the least. It applies to:
- 1. All connected software applications "subject to the influence of China" that are reasonably believed to be facilitating or contributing to China's "malicious cyber activities".
- 2. Any foreign entity that engages in or facilitates an act of election interference against the United States, its treaty allies, or democratic or emerging democratic partners of the United States.
- 3. Any foreign entity that engages in or facilitates an act of steering United States policy and regulatory decisions in favor of China's strategic objectives, to the detriment of the economic or national security of the United States.
Comment Re: What tasks cannot be done by AI in 10 years? (Score 1) 101
And no, it's not that they're not paying enough
Yes, it is. I guarantee there is a wage at which all available hotel staff positions would be filled.
Comment Why? (Score 1) 99
I don't understand why pharmacies feel the need to get between doctors and their patients. I mean, I assume Cerebral and Done are licensed providers with DEA-registered physicians. Shouldn't any action like this be under the purview of the DEA? Pharmacies have way too much arbitrary discretion. We need pharmacy neutrality.
Comment Re:Could Musk be a slashdotter? (Score 1) 211
Hah! That's so awesome. Thanks for the plug, Elon! Slashdot can certainly use it these days lol.
Comment Could Musk be a slashdotter? (Score 2) 211
Hmm. It's kind of cool that Musk keeps responding to Slashdot tweets. I wonder if he's a Slashdotter. If so, hi Elon!
Submission + - The NIH Director On Why Americans Aren't Getting Healthier (npr.org)
An anonymous reader writes: It's Dr. Francis Collins' last few weeks as director of the National Institutes of Health after 12 years, serving under three presidents. Collins made his name doing the kind of biomedical research NIH is famous for, especially running The Human Genome Project, which fully sequenced the human genetic code. The focus on biomedicine and cures has helped him grow the agency's budget to over $40 billion a year and win allies in both political parties.
Still, in a broad sense, Americans' health hasn't improved much in those 12 years, especially compared with people in peer countries, and some have argued the agency hasn't done enough to try to turn these trends around. One recently retired NIH division director has quipped that one way to increase funding for this line of research would be if "out of every $100, $1 would be put into the 'Hey, how come nobody's healthy?' fund."
In a wide-ranging conversation, Collins answers NPR's questions as to why — for all the taxpayer dollars going to NIH research — there haven't been more gains when it comes to Americans' overall health. He also talks about how tribalism in American culture has fueled vaccine hesitancy, and he advises his successor on how to persevere on research of politically charged topics — like guns and obesity and maternal health — even if powerful lobbies might want that research not to get done.
Still, in a broad sense, Americans' health hasn't improved much in those 12 years, especially compared with people in peer countries, and some have argued the agency hasn't done enough to try to turn these trends around. One recently retired NIH division director has quipped that one way to increase funding for this line of research would be if "out of every $100, $1 would be put into the 'Hey, how come nobody's healthy?' fund."
In a wide-ranging conversation, Collins answers NPR's questions as to why — for all the taxpayer dollars going to NIH research — there haven't been more gains when it comes to Americans' overall health. He also talks about how tribalism in American culture has fueled vaccine hesitancy, and he advises his successor on how to persevere on research of politically charged topics — like guns and obesity and maternal health — even if powerful lobbies might want that research not to get done.
Comment Re:Why not cut the cords? (Score 1) 217
TikTok was originally an American company called Musical.ly. It was bought by ByteDance and rebranded as TikTok. If TikTok's Chinese ownership is such a problem, why was a Chinese company allowed to buy an American company in the first place?
Huh? Musical.ly was also a Chinese company. They had an office in Santa Monica, but it was headquartered in Shanghai.
Comment Re:Why not cut the cords? (Score 1) 217
Huh? Musical.ly was also a Chinese company. They had an office in Santa Monica, but it was headquartered in Shanghai.
Comment Re:And I wont buy it (Score 4, Insightful) 98
3. No headphone jack.
4. No sd card slot.
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