Khanzarate

Khanzarate , 19 days ago to Privacy in Proton is transitioning towards a non-profit structure

It's a bit different because of the stated values though.

Raspberry pi's foundation is focused on making computers available broadly, while this new organization is focused on making privacy widely accessible.

While both can be commercialized, the pi's foundation has no fundamental problems with selling out privacy or focusing on money to achieve those goals. Proton would have a much harder time arguing that profiting from sale.of private data supports privacy.

This is relevant because it means even if the remaining shares end up on the stock market, the foundation can use its majority ownership to veto any privacy concerns.

Time will tell. I could also have missed something

Khanzarate , 19 days ago to Privacy in Proton is transitioning towards a non-profit structure

A company with a public offering basically cannot refuse a large enough buyout because with a public offering comes a financial responsibility to the shareholders. Public stock is a contract saying give me money and I'll do my best to make you money back, and it's very legally binding.

You can avoid this by never going public, but that also means you basically don't get big investors for expanding what you can offer. A public offering involves losing some of your rights as owner for cash.

When the legal goal becomes "money above all else", it is hard to justify NOT selling all the data and violating the trust of your customers for money, customer loyalty has to be monetizable and also worth more.

Proton has given a majority share to a nonprofit with a legal requirement to uphold the current values, not make money. This means that the remaining ownership can be sold to whoever, the only way anything gets done is if this foundation agrees. It prevents everything associated with a legal financial responsibility to make money, but still allows the business to do business things and make money, which seems to be proton's founder's belief, that the software should be sold to be sustainable.

Khanzarate , 19 days ago to Privacy in Proton is transitioning towards a non-profit structure

Seems solid.

It doesn't change a ton, but the point was basically them putting their money where their mouth is and saying "now we can't sell out like everything else."

If you liked them before, this is great. It means google or whoever literally can't buy them out, it's not about the money. If you were iffy already because they're not FOSS or whatever other reason, this doesn't change that, either, for better or worse

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to Technology in FinalSpark builds processor from 16 organoid brain cells

Well they remembered the plot of Frankenstein and boldly applied it to reality to become afraid of a new thing.

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to Technology in Apple's AI plans involves 'black box' for cloud data

I mean a black box would just mean that no one can see it as it processes. Put things in, get things out. As long as their claims are true, this will certainly do that. Same as an onboard AI that we still don't understand.

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to Technology in Apple's AI plans involves 'black box' for cloud data

They're basically saying they won't ship off data to be processed to anyone else. Apple server hardware will process it in data centers.

There's then a further promise that this hardware will be isolated from other things apple is doing, so that no other apple processes not related to AI will be able to see this data.

So, for instance, some other AI company might cut a deal with Amazon, get a discount on AWS processing, and in exchange, let amazon snoop through the data being processed. Or, a company might use a cheaper process in an existing data center that isnt particularly secure, and just not care if its being spied on. I'm sure there's more likely scenarios as well, I'm not a security expert, but apple is promising to thwart any similar thing, by promising the "cloud" for AI is a unique cloud, not just encrypted or whatever, but actually physically separate from everything else

Its the equivalent of saying "this product won't trigger your peanut allergy, we've built a facility that will never see a peanut, so cleaning procedures are easy and accidental contamination is impossible since this product is the only thing made in this factory."

These are still just claims though, not facts, so we'll see.

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to Technology in Microsoft's newest tactic to convert Windows 10 users is giving them a big comparison list

3.0

2.0 was windows 8.

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to 196 in Reasonable response rule

So I have been unable to quickly confirm this on the post office directly, but the commonly cited rule online is quoted as 917.243(b).

If we can believe the multiple sources and the rule hasn't been changed, I recalled it a little incorrectly. Using such a letter as a label is legal but if they deem it an improper usage, like directly mailing a brick with the letter taped to it, they reserve the right to just dispose of it. No trouble for the sender though, so it can't hurt.

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to 196 in Reasonable response rule

It's not legal anymore but that doesn't mean you'll get caught

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to 196 in Microsoft Rule

It'll stick anyway because Microsoft is not about to let all that data go. It's great for training better AI and for advertising, and those seem to be the only businesses in big tech lately.

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to 196 in Microsoft Rule

Like that, but filtered through an AI.

Features: questions like "Hey, where's that file I worked on last week", "What was that recipe I found the other day" or "hey can you pull up a copy of this document from 3 days ago so I can compare them" all work. Its nice to be able to just do that, and you can apply all the normal AI editing things to them, too. They're all available.

Downside: a black box AI system the user doesn't have full control over has the right to record literally everything you do on your computer. They promise its local, for now, but not only is Microsoft not trustworthy in that regard, even if they're honest we don't know if or when they'll change that policy. I would not be surprised if the next step was "A small amount of none identifiable information is transmitted to our servers" snuck in, and they used that permission to have Microsoft Recall answer queries for advertisers directly, technically without ever identifying you. Advertisers could directly ask your own computer for all the info they'll ever need.

And, yes, Mac still has Time Machine. Linux has its own version, too. Both are very handy and I've used them each personally. In my personal opinion, a basic search with time machine does enough of Microsoft recall's job that I'm not going near it, but honestly at least you're getting functionality out of them selling your data, so it could be worse.

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to Technology in Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports to add proper ray tracing, ultrawide, high FPS, and more

So, you're pretty much spot on with how emulators work. I also like using claymation to demonstrate it, like this. Your computer bends over backwards to give the game the exact environment it expects.

What makes recompilation more than a simple script is the rebuilding aspect. I brought up claymation because it's a great analogy for this, too. An n64 ROM is a complete set of characters, sets, and a script for a claymation movie. It's I in one studio right now, and that studio is the N64, but you need this to be in your PC studio.

First, you have to decompile your sets and characters. You take reference photos and rip out every tree in a forest set and roll each tree back into it's own ball of clay, with its own reference photo each time. Every little clay cobble on a road, characters outfits, hair, limbs, you meticulously separate every piece of clay that Nintendo shaped, ball them up, and pack them. You now have a million little clay balls and reference photos for every one of them. You take these back to your PC studio. Thankfully, with these reference photos, your clay 3D printer (compiler) can return these balls into something very close to their original shapes, except there's a bunch of little mistakes. One character's leg is slightly thinner and longer than it should be, which messes up their gait when you re-film this, so you manually tweak the leg to be accurate. The cobbles don't quite fit the same, they're a bit smaller, but you have extra clay because of that so you just make more cobblestones. The road doesn't look exactly like the original, but that's fine. The trees, again, don't quite fit right, but you've made similar trees in your studio before and you know those will work so you actually just use those as references instead of the originals. You get filming but this one scene just isn't lit right, and you can't figure out why, but you eventually figure out the N64 studio opened the blinds on their window to get natural sun in this shot, but your studio doesn't have a good view of the sun at that angle, so you have to get a good lamp.

You face a million little hurdles decompiling and recompiling. Its almost literally reinventing the wheel. Almost all the work goes into little details that almost seem unnecessary, but there's so many that it's absolutely necessary. I was watching a playthrough of a recompiled majoras mask earlier today, and the Dev of this project found his way there, too, and he said it took a few days to get majoras mask to decompile and recompile, and about a year to fix all those little details that in software become lag or new bugs. So the script guy isn't really wrong when he said he could do it fast, but he definitely wouldn't do it right.

Khanzarate , 1 month ago to Technology in Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail

I think of LLMs like digital bugs, doing their thing, basically programmed.

They're just programmed with virtual life experience instead of a traditional programmer.

Khanzarate , 2 months ago to Technology in Windows 10 reaches 70% market share as Windows 11 keeps declining

You forgot Vista between XP and 7, and it wasn't great, so the pattern holds up remarkably well.

8 felt like a mobile OS, because it was.

10 is OK. Not as good as 7, broke support for a bunch of things, really amped up the spyware feeling, but it works OK.

Then 11.

Probably still can have a computer though, it's just not fully yours on 11.

Khanzarate , 2 months ago to Technology in Tesla to lay off everyone working on Superchargers, new vehicles

Ah that explains that nicely. Thanks.