Comment Re:Obligatory Futurama (Score 1) 66
That added music was annoying though.
Comment Re: It's about destroying privacy and security (Score 1) 80
It has happened under both.
Submission + - BMW Blames Young People for Loss of Real Buttons in New Cars (caranddriver.com)
sinij writes:
In an interview with CarExpert, Vikram Pawah, the CEO of BMW Group Australia, said that young buyers prefer the newer controls. “We can see that voice and touch are becoming more and more common,” Pawah told the outlet. “Maybe it’s a generational thing as well. You would see that a lot of the younger generation, maybe 45 or below, they’re tapped into these technologies at a faster pace, using voice, using touch.”
This would be somewhat believable if this design only affected cars targeted at young buyers. It does not. Many of BMW are targeted at affluent boomers and Gen X due to high price.
Submission + - US Moves Medical Marijuana Off Schedule I (justice.gov)
An anonymous reader writes: US cannabis law has moved more in the past year than in the previous fifty. In April 2026, following a Trump executive order, the DOJ rescheduled FDA-approved and state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, the first federal acknowledgment of accepted medical use in over 50 years. Recreational cannabis stays Schedule I, but a DEA administrative hearing on extending Schedule III to all cannabis ran through July, with a decision pending. Schedule III also frees medical operators from the 280E tax ban and eases research rules. Separately, a November 2025 law redefines legal hemp by total THC starting November 12, 2026. This 2026 cannabis law update breaks down each change.
Comment Not sure I disagree (Score 5, Insightful) 153
I recently downgraded from Cable 800MB to starlink. Simply because for some reason at 2pm EVERY SINGLE DAY my ping times with charter would go from around 30/ms to 100-1000/ms and it lasted for a few hours. I work from home and that was unusable. The only other "broadband" available was starlink. So now I'm much slower in the 100-200MB range, but overall we haven't noticed much difference.
So I'd say, yeah, you don't have to go all the way up to gigabit to be considered broadband.
Comment Re:Holdout from streaming (Score 1) 9
https://nightlies.videolan.org...
Ew, I am not touching v4 for long time.
Comment Re: A different kind of security (Score 1) 62
Also, to preempt any pedantic response, yes, I'm aware that Cray computers are still very much a thing. But, using the phrase "Cray computers" as the epitome of computing power is very much a thing of the 1990s and before.
Comment Re: A different kind of security (Score 1) 62
Hah, now see, I left some keywords in my last post you would have picked up on if had done national security work (at least connected to one of the bigger players).
That Wikipedia page is severely out of date. For instance, it quotes Hayden as NSA director talking about "Cray" computers. Hayden hasn't held a position in maybe 20 years, and his last position was as DCIA! US Intel is very, very aware of the computational and hacking abilities of China, North Korea, and others.
Comment Re:Never going there again... (Score 1) 31
During the old days, they were fun but now not anymore. Good thing I don't have any younglings.
Comment Re:Holdout from streaming (Score 1) 9
V3.0.24 prereleases exist, but is this issue fixed? I doubt it since VLC would had said so.
Comment Re:Holdout from streaming (Score 1) 9
WACUP rocks. https://getwacup.com/ for it.
VLC is also slow to startup in my 64-bit W10 Pro.
Submission + - VLC blames Windows 11 bug for slow performance, defends open source and calls ou (windowslatest.com) 9
Misanthrope writes: VLC can take 33 seconds to start playing an MP3 on some Windows PCs, and VideoLAN, the developers behind the open-source media player, says a Microsoft Defender bug is to blame.
Jonathan Blow, the game designer and programmer behind Braid and The Witness, said he had finally switched from VLC to Microsoft’s Media Player because the former had become painfully slow, then used the moment to declare that “a large sector of open source software is in a truly embarrassing place now.”
VideoLAN couldn’t let this criticism slide and accused Microsoft, saying a Windows 11 Defender update was interfering with VLC’s plugin cache. However, we checked VLC’s bug reports and found several users on Windows 10 and Windows 11 describing the same startup problem.
Note that the criticism is for MP3 files and not videos, which is what VLC is typically associated with. I have already sold my soul to streaming services like Spotify, and didn’t have any experience of a delay like this despite using VLC every other day.
But for those of you who use VLC to listen to music and have experienced a 33-second delay, the supposed reason is VLC’s plugin cache.
Jonathan Blow, the game designer and programmer behind Braid and The Witness, said he had finally switched from VLC to Microsoft’s Media Player because the former had become painfully slow, then used the moment to declare that “a large sector of open source software is in a truly embarrassing place now.”
VideoLAN couldn’t let this criticism slide and accused Microsoft, saying a Windows 11 Defender update was interfering with VLC’s plugin cache. However, we checked VLC’s bug reports and found several users on Windows 10 and Windows 11 describing the same startup problem.
Note that the criticism is for MP3 files and not videos, which is what VLC is typically associated with. I have already sold my soul to streaming services like Spotify, and didn’t have any experience of a delay like this despite using VLC every other day.
But for those of you who use VLC to listen to music and have experienced a 33-second delay, the supposed reason is VLC’s plugin cache.
Comment Re: A different kind of security (Score 1) 62
> Indeed. The Chinese also know that publishing a story about a found backdoor in their software would be a great exploit for the US and hence they know that the US is looking. Strangely, nothing has been found so far. Or rather very obviously, nothing has been found and the whole thing is nothing but lies.
Or maybe, just maybe, when the Chinese AND the Americans IC agencies find exploits and backdoors in the other's countries, they keep them quiet and monitor, save for later, watch other people exploit, etc.
Maybe, when 3-letter agencies in McClean and elsewhere catch incursions, they monitor them closely, analyze their tactics and techniques, and contain. It's a pretty Byzantine system, but that's modern spycraft.
Comment Re:For how long? (Score 1) 22
I would imagine they decay into something else in like 10e-15 seconds.
Submission + - Ordinary WiFi can now identify you with near-perfect accuracy (sciencedaily.com) 2
alternative_right writes: Ordinary WiFi networks could quietly become powerful surveillance tools, allowing people to be identified without cameras, special sensors, or even carrying a connected device. Researchers showed that unencrypted signals routinely exchanged between WiFi devices and routers can be used to create radio-based images of people and recognize them within seconds. In tests involving 197 participants, the system identified individuals with nearly 100% accuracy, even from different angles and regardless of how they walked.
