Comment What about Google? (Score 1) 58
So they're blocking *google* (and it's minions) too right?
That's the biggest anti-privacy elephant in the room.
Submission + - To conserve bandwidth, streaming providers and apps should disable autoplay 1
An anonymous reader writes: We keep seeing stories about how providers are slowing down their streaming speed to reduce bandwidth usage during this period when many are being asked to stay at home. In case you have missed them, here are a couple of examples:
https://ew.com/tv/netflix-coro...
https://www.wired.com/story/yo...
But it seems that many are totally ignoring a very obvious way to reduce usage significantly, and that is by disabling autoplay on their web sites and in their apps. To give an example, a couple of days ago I was watching a show on Hulu, and either I was more sleepy than I thought or the show was more boring than I had expected (probably some combination of both), but I drifted off to sleep. Two hours later I awoke and realize that Hulu had streamed two additional episodes that no one was watching. I searched in vain for a way to disable autoplay of the next episode, but if there is some way to do it I could not find it.
What I wonder is how many people even want autoplay? I believe Netflix finally gave their users a way to disable it, but they need to affirmatively do so via a setting somewhere. But many other platforms, including the aforementioned Hulu, give their users no option to disable autoplay. That is also true of many individual apps that can be used on a Roku or similar device. If conserving bandwidth is really that important, then my contention is that autoplay of the next episode should be something you need to opt in for, not something enabled by default that either cannot be disabled, or that forces the user to search for a setting to disable.
https://ew.com/tv/netflix-coro...
https://www.wired.com/story/yo...
But it seems that many are totally ignoring a very obvious way to reduce usage significantly, and that is by disabling autoplay on their web sites and in their apps. To give an example, a couple of days ago I was watching a show on Hulu, and either I was more sleepy than I thought or the show was more boring than I had expected (probably some combination of both), but I drifted off to sleep. Two hours later I awoke and realize that Hulu had streamed two additional episodes that no one was watching. I searched in vain for a way to disable autoplay of the next episode, but if there is some way to do it I could not find it.
What I wonder is how many people even want autoplay? I believe Netflix finally gave their users a way to disable it, but they need to affirmatively do so via a setting somewhere. But many other platforms, including the aforementioned Hulu, give their users no option to disable autoplay. That is also true of many individual apps that can be used on a Roku or similar device. If conserving bandwidth is really that important, then my contention is that autoplay of the next episode should be something you need to opt in for, not something enabled by default that either cannot be disabled, or that forces the user to search for a setting to disable.
Submission + - A Hacker Stole and Leaked the Xbox Series X Graphics Source Code (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader writes: AMD has been having a particularly rough few months, apparently. The chip designer has revealed that a hacker stole test files for a "subset" of current and upcoming graphics hardware, some of which had been posted online before they were taken down. While AMD was shy on details, the claimed intruder told TorrentFreak that the material included source code for Navi 10 (think Radeon RX 5700 series), the future Navi 21 and the Arden GPU inside the Xbox Series X.
The self-proclaimed hacker added that she wanted $100 million for the source code and threatened to "leak everything" if there was no buyer. She reportedly found the GPU data in a "hacked computer" in November, although AMD said it hadn't been approached until December. AMD doesn't appear to be bowing under pressure. It believed the stolen code was "not core to the competitiveness or security" of its products, and said there was an "ongoing criminal investigation."
The self-proclaimed hacker added that she wanted $100 million for the source code and threatened to "leak everything" if there was no buyer. She reportedly found the GPU data in a "hacked computer" in November, although AMD said it hadn't been approached until December. AMD doesn't appear to be bowing under pressure. It believed the stolen code was "not core to the competitiveness or security" of its products, and said there was an "ongoing criminal investigation."
Submission + - The exFAT filesystem is coming to Linux—Paragon software's not happy about
couchslug writes: When software and operating system giant Microsoft announced its support for inclusion of the exFAT filesystem directly into the Linux kernel back in August, it didn't get a ton of press coverage. But filesystem vendor Paragon Software clearly noticed this month's merge of the Microsoft-approved, largely Samsung-authored version of exFAT into the VFS for-next repository, which will in turn merge into Linux 5.7—and Paragon doesn't seem happy about it. https://arstechnica.com/inform...
Comment Hopefully OSM can get it correct? (Score 3, Interesting) 70
Google (or some up-stream data provider) marked a forest track across our property as a "road" - it's literally a track only fit for walking for very experienced 4WD drivers. Yet a couple of times a week people are parked outside our house wondering where the road has gone. Occasionally they're quite upset, as if somehow it's my fault that google sent them 10km out of their way.
We've "told" google it's not a road, encourage everyone who ends up here to do so as well, yet nothing ever changes.
Is it even possible to get through to google without a lawsuit?
So I'd really like to see OSM maps used more for navigation, at least I feel like I can contribute to this.
Comment Re:what? (Score 2) 778
It wasn't just the moving of the buttons.
It was the moving of the buttons (after 20 years of collectively keeping them right), without asking, and without a simple way of moving them back.
And then it was the inclusion of Pulseaudio, which for quite a number of people was a complete PITA.
The next bad thing will be the (Dis) "Unity" non-desktop with it's ridiculous side-panel, yet constant menus.
Submission + - Famous British autism study an 'elaborate fraud,' (cnn.com)
Charliemopps writes: An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was "no doubt" Wakefield was responsible.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
Submission + - PHP floating point bug crashes servers (idg.com.au)
angry tapir writes: "A newly unearthed bug in certain versions of the PHP scripting language could crash servers when the software is given the task of converting a large floating point number, raising the possibility that the glitch could be exploited by hackers. The bug will cause the PHP processing software to enter an infinite loop when it tries to convert the series of digits "2.2250738585072011e-308" from the string format into the floating point format. The bug only seems to affect version 5.2 and 5.3 of the language."
Comment Re:australia? (Score 4, Insightful) 237
They want to 'develop' into a fascist state off the bad and skip that whole messy democracy stuff
It's true. The AFP also wanted a few other Facecook buttons: "Are my Papers OK?" and "Turn in My Parents". The real problems started in Australian politics when the christian fundys managed to get a guy into parliament. I guess they think they have the moral high-ground; when really they're just a bunch of arse-clowns, pushing their beliefs. So much for separation of church and state. *sigh*
Comment Don't speed in CH (Score 3, Informative) 52
In Switzerland the people don't give way to the car, and it's a good thing.
A typical village speed limit is 50km/h, or 30km/h in the single-lane back streets, so this guy was doing 2x or 3x the speed limit. Your typical Swiss village was laid-out 500 years before cars existed, and has narrow roads, no curb on the gutter, and twisty turns around houses etc. The children are encouraged to walk to school un-escorted from age 5 onwards (not be driven a few blocks in an 5 litre V8 "SUV" as in Australia), so there's a very real chance of someone distracted by a butterfly not crossing the road as well as they could.
The speed limit on the highway is 120km/h. And FWIW, the curve to the speeding fines is very steep. My wife got a few ~5km/h over speeding fines and they were usually less than 50 franks (USD$50). But once you start getting > 30km/h over the posted limit, the fines get huge.
Comment Re:Tough project (Score 1) 370
This is basically what we do at our company.
Any time some procedure, e.g.: how to package a release of , test if server is responding, etc.
it goes in the wiki. Lots of more mundane things are in there too - phone number lists, reference-images
for icons, business card templates, photos from the xmas party, etc. etc. It forms a bit of a repository
for things that otherwise someone needs to be responsible for.
It *does* take more time to document a process rather than just doing it, but you only have to document
it once, and any corrections are easy to implement.
We use DokuWiki (http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki) it's bloody fantastic.
Most people do so many things a day (all that "meta-work") it's seems impossible to document!
I'd suggest, at least initially, just getting some of the significant processes written down,
after-all, everyone takes a vacation sometime.
Any time some procedure, e.g.: how to package a release of , test if server is responding, etc.
it goes in the wiki. Lots of more mundane things are in there too - phone number lists, reference-images
for icons, business card templates, photos from the xmas party, etc. etc. It forms a bit of a repository
for things that otherwise someone needs to be responsible for.
It *does* take more time to document a process rather than just doing it, but you only have to document
it once, and any corrections are easy to implement.
We use DokuWiki (http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki) it's bloody fantastic.
Most people do so many things a day (all that "meta-work") it's seems impossible to document!
I'd suggest, at least initially, just getting some of the significant processes written down,
after-all, everyone takes a vacation sometime.
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The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation. -- Lew Mammel, Jr.
