Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:You think we won something? (Score 1) 45

The OSS exception prevents something being taken away. That is a win, even if we did not win something.

And what is that something?

All the OS age verification stuff does is avoid the third party age verification systems currently in place for things like Discord and other stuff. If you use Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android, the age verification can be done via an attestation from the OS. All the Linux exception does is not require Linux to support it.

That means a Linux user wanting to use Discord and accessing age-restricted features would require using the same third-party services they always had (these services are not going away since basically all OSes right now do not support it). And those third party services would require IDs and such, which will not be securely stored (since many have experienced breaches).

All I see is that if you run Linux, you're going to have to give up information to some third party who isn't trustworthy and who may experience a data breach tomorrow.

Comment Re:maybe the low paid rent a cops took them. You k (Score 1) 26

Or maybe it was a competitor who wasn't interested in stealing the laptop so much as stealing the game before its release?

In any other timeline, I'd agree. But given Gamescom has been going on for years and such stuff hasn't really been a thing, stealing laptops of some indie developer doesn't really get you much.

I'd think it was more for the hardware - tho laptops may not be worth too much, but you can bet they would have 64GB of RAM and likely a nice SSD, both of which can net you north of a grand. Plus SSDs and memory are tiny and can be stripped from the laptop in minutes.

I suppose we might find out if someone finds a bunch of laptops stripped of memory and SSDs. (If you want to use those Bitlocker exploits it requires the original machine so if the hardware is "discovered" then you know it was just for the hardware.).

Comment Re:I look forward to 2029 (Score 1) 230

The right-wing loonies are coming for the EU too. It's a constant battle, it never ends. There will always be people who vote for hate, everywhere. Countries outside the US are not immune to this nonsense either.

Correct. It's why it's a constant battle. In Europe, the last time it happened was in Germany just prior to WWII.

It is no coincidence that the US voted the way it did because WWII is basically a distant memory and the lessons of the past were forgotten. Especially since the rise of American Exceptionalism that happened in 1956 when the US became the superpower and took over from the UK.

Comment Re:Total BS (Score 2) 168

There's no reason to not incorporate both.

The UI is easy - while the car is in motion (not stopped), the touch screen should be disabled. Any adjustments you need to make while moving needs to be done with buttons you can feel and navigate without looking.

So things like HVAC controls (fan speed, temperature, mode (AC/heat/defrost/etc)), radio (volume, forward/back depending on mode - e.g., radio seek forward/backwards, or track skip/repeat), seat heat/cooling, and seat adjustments all may need to done whilst in motion as they can affect safety and comfort. But things like setting your destination on the navigation, setting up your music playlist, etc. only need to be done while the car is stopped and thus can remain touchscreen only interface.

There should also be buttons to control what the screen should show as the main display - e.g., a button to show the map or navigation in action, a button to show infotainment information, car status (fuel, battery, power flow) etc. But that's only needed if there's not enough screen to show all the items together, and it should just be a readout status where you can glance at it.

Comment Re:They should have used the GCC decision (Score 3, Insightful) 37

It was offered as a choice I think. Debian put it up to a vote.

And the FSF has good reason for the GCC decision - because the legal status of AI contributed code is uncertain. Is it a code laundering machine that can turn GPL code into legitimate "free" code? Or does code retain the license? Either situation is bad, especially the second where incompatible licensed code (e.g., GPLv2, BSD, etc) might get introduced which complicates the licensing.

Debian is far less reliant on code - the amount of original Debian code is very small compared to the amount of code they ship. If the Linux kernel gets encumbered with legal issues, it doesn't really encumber Debian since Debian uses it as an input and the only contributions Debian makes are a few build, packaging and configuration files. At best they might have to do something if something becomes non-free but that's likely on a package level. Debian is basically bundling a bunch of software together and having only minor bits of it being their own original code.

Comment Re:a lot to prove (Score 1) 51

The fact they've targetted Anthropic alone suggests they already have the evidence of internal Anthropic comms.

Or they found in their music and movie torrents IP addresses belonging to Anthropic. You think they've stopped monitoring torrent sites? It's just that they couldn't bring in one giant lawsuit asking for the identities of 1000 John Does and then dropping the lawsuit once they have them. They'd have to bring in 1000 individual lawsuits to identify and sue individuals and that is a lot more expensive.

Anthropic, however, is a much bigger target and since they're a commercial entity, a much juicier one. Instead of going after grandmas and kids, you've got companies with trillion dollar valuations. And they're selling access as well.

Comment Re:Just numbers, or some culture? (Score 5, Informative) 62

The "car battery" is actually a specially designed lead-acid battery. It's called ISL - Ignition, Starting, Lighting and is a battery designed for those loads. Basically to be able to provide initial lighting and ignition and starting current. Once the engine is started the alternator takes over. ISL batteries are terrible for deep cycle use - they should not be discharged deeply or they will degrade very quickly.

Most of the capacity of the battery is there to give it decent "engine off" battery life without degrading severely while in storage. So even though it may be 70-100AH, the car must still shut down to enter a low current state of about 10mA max draw. Modern cars generally have several low power states - one entered when you turn off the engine and remove the key - this mode most of the stuff turns off but stays alive. After an hour or so, then they will enter a deeper power saving state. This allows for short stops where everything doesn't need to initialize because they were still running, but then once parked for a longer time enter low power state so the battery can last several months and still start the engine.

The consumption of starting an engine even in the deep of winter is generally about 1-2% charge.

EVs which don't have to provide high currents still need a 12V system with significant capacity. But instead of needing an ISL battery, they can use a deep cycle battery, which cannot provide as much current (but you only need to power a contactor to enable the traction battery) but can provide power and be discharged fully without degradation. The reason you need a big battery still is the 12V systems still draw power and you need again, a long battery life since the battery cannot be charged unless the traction battery contactor is enabled.

The EV traction battery contactor is enabled only when the car is "running" or charging. If you're just put it into accessory only mode it's drawing 12V power from that but the traction battery isn't enabled. When you charge an EV, the charger also enables the DC-DC converter so the 12V battery gets charged too.

Comment Re:Seriously, Sam? (Score 1) 23

Umm. Better check that employers category again. If you start sniffing around people with serious security clearances, even if there is no classified content involved, counter intelligence will be very interested.

But still not legally protected. That content could easily be sealed evidence used just for the trial but it certainly is not privileged.

Legal protections apply to attorneys and their clients, as well as doctors and patient, and to a very limited extent, married spouses.

And even that protection is NOT absolute. If you're talking with your attorney in a public area and someone overhears your conversation, that conversation is no longer privileged and may be disclosed in court. Even having a friend accompany you to visit your lawyer can have significant impact on privilege.

Chatbots are basically the same problem. You may be chatting with a chatbot, but the third party hosting the chatbot has access to your conversation. So even if the conversation is privileged between you and the chatbot, the third party is privy to it and it's no longer protected.

Comment Re:Worth keeping in mind (Score 1) 36

Actually the main issues are because the Linux kernel ships with a lot of drivers and many of which have lots of issues.

It's why the kernel has been expunging a LOT of code as well - older architectures as well as drivers that haven't seen much development are getting expunged to reduce the number of lines of code that AI will have issues with. It's why there's basically only one staging driver left - and it was kept around as it's still being used. But the rest of staging was expunged.

I suspect the Linux kernel team will have a "Microsoft Moment" where they will expunge basically anything except the core bits and retain a minimal set of drivers that are needed for basic hardware bring up (console, serial, network). The rest of the drivers will be carved out into a separate driver tree and maintained separately by a separate team. So you compile the kernel and then compile drivers separately so the CVEs that affect drivers will be handled separately from CVEs that affect core kernel functionality.

I call it a Microsoft Moment as Windows ships with some drivers for the most common pieces of hardware you'll find and the rest are often downloaded from Windows Update. So Microsoft only really needs to have a comprehensive collection of network drivers on their base OS image which should allow any PC to get onto the Internet and download more drivers (graphics, sound, etc).

Comment Re:Let me guess (Score 1) 23

GTA-V Online is a multi-billion dollar enterprise, pretty sure the Rockstar leaks revealed they have a weekly playerbase of something like 9 million, of course they're gonna maximize that.

That's nutty bavarian numbers, a lesser company would have put all their efforts into online instead still delivering an entire single player campaign.

No guarantee of success through. If people can't carry their character through to the new game, or people are so fed up with microtransactions it could be a big failure still. Sony's cancelled many live service games because they didn't become instant hits and so were cancelled after a couple of months. Heck, they even disbanded Bungie (yes the same Bungie of Halo after it was divested from Microsoft) after Marathon (no relation to Bungie's original game for Macintosh) basically flopped and even discontinuing Destiny 2 or something to force players to their new game didn't work.

Players can be fed up with online games that serve as nothing but to suck up money. Rockstar likely is hedging with a campaign so if the online flops they still have something. Sony lost billions in several games that are now shut down or closing.

Comment Re:This is a fight that cannot be won (Score 1) 59

The problem isn't the license plate reader itself. In isolation, they're not the big brother utility. It's what happens when Flock decides to aggregate all the readers together to form a network.

If the license plate reader data stayed local (like they had for many years - they aren't new) you get far less problems. The problem was that the data started getting aggregated together to form a complete picture of people.

And it's not even useful - stolen car reports were proven to be rather ineffective where most of the alerts were useless because they were tags from other states with the same plate.

Jaguar has a huge problem with them, because of the odd New Jersey license plates that have letters, and two sets of numbers, one big, one small. The cameras didn't read the small numbers, so it results in the entire fleet of Jaguar cars they send out to reviewers cannot be used because one stolen car has a similar plate of letters and the big numbers.

The problem with Flock cameras is two fold. First, it's the network effect - they have cameras everywhere and they let anyone and everyone access them all as part of the subscription. The second problem is law enforcement is lazy and they do not consider that multiple states might issue license plates with the same numbers and digits, resulting in confrontations where a parent in an SUV gets pulled over because their plate matches a stolen motorcycle. Then there's the government issue where ICE is misusing the database to track people (or rather, ICE is misusing the AHJ to get them information to track people since ICE is not able to access the information directly).

It's a case of where if multiple jurisdictions nearby used different incompatible systems, things wouldn't be so controversial because it wouldn't be possible to track someone without needing access to multiple systems which would require multiple checks (e.g., warrants).

When the Flock network was small and limited itself to a few HOA roads no one really cared and the data that mattered was always accessed after the fact and no one could go beyond the cameras they had. Then they branched out and let cities along with private entities install cameras and gave access freely to the entire network.

Comment Re:A and B systems (Score 1) 60

The problem still remains of critical path systems - like the switch that switches between sides and if that needs an upgrade, it can be tricky.

And even then there's no guarantee - the great AT&T outage of 1994 was caused by a software bug that remained hidden until a very specific set of things happened then the whole network collapsed. Even worse, the trigger was the redundancy management system (when a switch went down, it told nearby switches it was going down so they could route around it. The problem was that processing that going down message made that switch vulnerable for a brief moment - and if another switch sent a message saying it was going down in that moment, the switch would corrupt some memory. Which meant it had to go down, and thus tell all the switches around it that it was going down. As more of the network went down it meant more switches would have to handle the load, and then that causes overloads which causes the switch to go down causing other switches to get the message and be vulnerable, etc. etc. etc).

It's entirely possible that issues are not discovered until both sides are running the same software - sometimes the compatibility path is endlessly tested because deployments will take time (days to weeks or months, if issues are found) and thus compatibility with existing versions during rollout is essential and needs to work. This can result in issues once deployment is completed as the less tested code is pushed into service.

Comment Re:A better world (Score 1) 118

a 63% increase in Oxford commas

Well, thank God for that!

I think that was happening because of the lawsuit over the Oxford comma and whether or not it applied to the phrase in question. It involved a lot of analysis and such.

So in the end it was decided that there were clearer ways to indicate a list of things versus grouping of things in a list. And the Oxford comma was one of them.

Comment Re:So in the end (Score 1) 41

It was just a cash grab for mega corps. How much money is Amazon and Walmart returning?

None, because the calculation is basically impossible.

The Playdate is easy - it's built in one place and they charged the tariffs as they were charged.

But a product sold by Walmart or Amazon isn't so tidy. Perhaps the supplier discounted their prices, so technically the tariff refund should go to them? After all, the tariff was paid, but the price didn't change. Others they may have decided to absorb some tariffs on both sides. It's basically one huge mess, and in the end, it should be treated as a way to transfer money from taxpayers to corporations.

Because really, the quicker we get to Trump Tariff Taxes as real taxes the quicker we get to realizing we need to get rid of them.

Slashdot Top Deals

Programmers used to batch environments may find it hard to live without giant listings; we would find it hard to use them. -- D.M. Ritchie

Working...