Patch

Patch , 6 days ago to Technology in Netflix mulls introducing free ad-supported tier. The circle is complete

See, now I'm fine with that. I pay for Netflix and I want what I pay for to stay ad-free. Having an ad-supported tier with no fee in addition to that means that there are options for other people without enshittifying my experience.

That's a world of difference to what Amazon have done where they've shoved ads into the service that I thought I was paying for, and then offered to charge me even more to get my original ad-free service back.

Patch , 1 month ago to Technology in Google AI making up recalls that didn’t happen

This feels like something you should go tell Google about rather than the rest of us. They're the ones who have embedded LLM-generated answers to random search queries.

Patch , 1 month ago to Technology in Internet Archive is continuing to face DDoS attacks after several days, says “this attack has been sustained, impactful, targeted, adaptive, and importantly, mean”

Realistically, they could just love their servers abroad to a country with less problematic copyright rules and wind up their US operations. It would make no difference to the end user, unless ISPs are also ordered to block access. And even then it'd only be a VPN away.

The risk of total data loss is not zero, but it's also not the likely outcome.

Patch , 1 month ago to Technology in Male birth control breakthrough safely switches off fit sperm for a while

Oh yeah, I'll just tell my wife that we're never having sex again because we've now got enough kids. I'm sure this will be a healthy and emotionally viable way of strengthening our relationship over the next 30 years or so until the menopause.

Patch , 2 months ago to Selfhosted in Why is Matrix mentioned more often than XMPP in self hosted forums?

I looked at Dino and another one mentioned here and they look dated. Windows 95 feel with better anti-aliasing, rounder corners, but same colors? Gtk 2 or something?

Looks like a standard GTK4 app to me. Whether or not that is to someone's tastes is obviously subjective, but it uses the same design language as every other GTK app under the sun.

GTK apps always look out of place on Windows though. Looks far more sensible in its native environment (i.e. *nix running GNOME).

Patch , 2 months ago to Technology in Whistleblower 'would not' put family on Boeing 787 jet

Yes, it's always going to be unfeasible to cross the Atlantic or Pacific by train.

But the vast, vast majority of air journeys taken every day aren't trans-oceanic ones. Most journeys are between destinations within the Americas or within Eurasia and Africa. There are an awful lot of journeys by plane that could be moved to trains if the infrastructure was right.

Patch , 2 months ago to Technology in Whistleblower 'would not' put family on Boeing 787 jet

That seems to be a rather unfair assertion to make. Boeing seems to be unique amongst the big airlines in having these problems; and they're relatively new problems for them too, in the grand scheme of things.

I've never once heard of systemic issues of this sort at Airbus, and it seems lazy to do a "they're all the same!" when this really does seem to be a Boeing problem first and foremost.

Patch , 2 months ago to Technology in YouTube is finally cracking down on third-party apps that enable ad-blocking

Realistically Google Search and Google Maps don't provide anything unique that isn't provided by competitors, although a) they may provide a superior experience, and b) the competitors are not necessarily much more palatable (that is, Bing Search and Bing Maps are hardly a great ethical improvement).

YouTube is probably the only Google service where this is a genuine monopoly of sorts. That is, content that is on YouTube is not generally available on other platforms, and if you want to watch that content you have to watch it on YouTube. We might all live for the day when all content creators are dual-hosting in PeerTube or the like too, but we're a long long way from that right now.

Although I write that as someone who only very rarely actually uses YouTube, because largely the content isn't to my interest. Other than my local football club's channel, I can't think of anything on there that I actually seek out.

Patch , 4 months ago to Technology in Roku’s Ultimatum: Surrender Jury Trial Rights or Lose Access to Your TVs

An EULA is nominally a binding contract, in the sense that it is presented as such. No court has ever ruled and given precedent to the effect that EULAs are universally non-binding (because companies have always settled out of court for cases where it looks like they're going to lose).

It is well understood that the arguments against EULAs being binding are solid ones, and that the reason why so many cases settle is because companies are not confident of winning cases on the strength of EULA terms, but you still need to go through the rigmarole of attending court and presenting your defence case. That's how court cases work.

Edit: And perhaps more to the point of the OP, if you want to sue a company over some defect or service failure, it'll be them who introduce the EULA as a defence, and it'll be for you/your lawyers to argue against it. Which adds complexity and time to what might otherwise have been a straightforward claim, even if you win.

Patch , 4 months ago to Technology in Roku’s Ultimatum: Surrender Jury Trial Rights or Lose Access to Your TVs

If a company takes you to court, you can't just decide to ignore them. Either you/your representative turns up on the designated court dates and presents a case, or you'll most likely lose by default.

If it was possible to make a court case go away just by ignoring it then everyone would just do that.

Patch , 4 months ago to Technology in Roku’s Ultimatum: Surrender Jury Trial Rights or Lose Access to Your TVs

It probably isn't legal most places. EULAs are already considered fairly flimsy in terms of enforcement, but changing an EULA after you've already bought a device, in such a way as to reduce your statutory rights, is almost certainly a complete non-starter.

Patch , 4 months ago to Technology in HP is in the rent-a-printer business now

Everyone loves Brother for good reason.

I've had a decent experience with my Xerox too.

Patch , 4 months ago to Technology in 1 in 5 new car sales globally were EVs in 2023, and that's curbed oil demand – IEA

Different countries and states obviously have different electricity source mixes.

Here in the UK, coal accounts for around 1% of electricity. Natural gas is about 35%, biomass about 5%, and the rest is various clean renewables (wind, solar, hydro) or nuclear.

So although charging an EV is by no means fossil-fuel-free, it's considerably less fossil-fuel than an ICE car.

Patch , 4 months ago to Technology in Toyota wants hydrogen to succeed so bad it’s paying people to buy the Mirai

For comparison, grey hydrogen currently costs around $2 per kg, and green hydrogen costs around $12 per kg. Filling a Toyota Mirai tank with green hydrogen would cost you about $70. That's production at today's electricity prices. The cost to fully charge a Tesla is about $15, same rates.

So for green hydrogen to beat grey hydrogen on the open market, costs need to drop by a factor of 6. And because it can only do this if electricity prices drop off a cliff, it'd be doing this in an environment where you can fully charge a luxury BEV for $3...

Hydrogen is also not the only game in town in terms of competitors with BEV. For those niches where fully battery-operated vehicles aren't practical, there are also biofuels, which are (from a climate change point of view) greener than green hydrogen anyway (although they have their own controversies).

Patch , 4 months ago to Technology in Toyota wants hydrogen to succeed so bad it’s paying people to buy the Mirai

1 - renewable surpluses. As wind and solar keep ramping , hydrogen is a fantastic way to store that energy. Sure, there are efficiency losses but it's transportable, able to be stored long term, and able to be used from small scale to grid scale applications

Grid storage is a genuine problem that needs solving, but there's no particular reason to believe hydrogen is going to be the technology to fill that niche. There are much simpler and more efficient competitors, not least of which being pumped hydroelectricity, but also including exotic technologies like molten salt thermal plants or compressed air mineshafts. And batteries, for that matter; once portability stops being a concern, other battery chemistries start to be an option which don't include lithium at all, like sodium-sulfur.

And even if hydrogen electrolysis does make sense as a grid storage medium, there's no particular reason to think it's a good idea to package up this hydrogen, transport it, and stick it in vehicles to convert into electricity through their own mini power plants. The alternative, where hydrogen is simply stored and converted back into grid electricity on site to meet demand leveling requirements seems far more likely.