evatronic

evatronic , 4 months ago to Technology in Reddit has reportedly signed over its content to train AI models

That sub was mostly cops just repeating their own bad interpretation of the law. Terrible.

evatronic , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to Technology in Sony is erasing digital libraries that were supposed to be accessible “forever”

Funny how so much recent talk has emerged yet again about how companies like Microsoft want to get rid of disc drives on their next Xbox… [...]

While I will freely admit that the lack of a physical drive is a huge way to drive downloaded (and licensed, revokable) content controlled by the company, it's worth noting that physical media is really not all that great a medium for transferring things like games or movies anymore. Blu-ray discs can hold, in ideal situations, around 50GB of data. A lot of games -- especially AAA games, are well beyond that. I think Spider Man 2 came in at like 85GB? The internet says Hogwarts Legacy is ~75GB on XBox.

Network connectivity, and downloading content to our devices is almost certainly going to be the way a lot of the world works going forward. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to back our content up elsewhere, or offload it to some other device.

Your right in noting that the laws and regulations need to keep up and protect consumers' right to the content they've purchased.

edit: Here, I'll bold the important part.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in Apple Vision Pro Owners Are Struggling to Figure Out What They Just Bought

It's an uncomfortable way to watch porn.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in YouTube now suggests new content *by colour*

Well that's what I see.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in YouTube now suggests new content *by colour*

Also, I wonder how that works if you’re colorblind?

It's orange, blue, and yellow fyi.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead

Absolutely. The crawler is doing some rudimentary processing before it ever does any sort of data storage saving. That's the sort of thing that's being persisted behind the scenes, and it's almost certainly both not enough to reconstruct the web page, nor is it (realistically) human-friendly. I was going to say "readable" but it's probably some bullshit JSON or XML document full of nonsense no one wants to read.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in Tesla recalls 2.2 million cars — nearly all of its vehicles sold in the U.S. — over warning light issue

Recall for a font. A fucking font.

Really this is just further proof that software developers should be no where near automotive design.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

They're apparently for things that are already heavily tested in prior models and haven't changed.

Like the cockpit door is the same in a bunch of planes, or something, no need to test it in every plane model, etc.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in After 32 years, one of the ’Net’s oldest software archives is shutting down | Ars Technica

Ars wrote a decent article about it a while back. I dug it up - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/

It's a fun read. The tl;dr: OS/2 had lots of features Windows didn't, but IBM is notoriously bad at marketing, and failed to beat Microsoft in the public perception arena.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in IRS successfully launches their own free Direct File - some of my fellow 'murcans are eligible

It's a trial program, to work out the major kinks, issues, and problems before rolling it out further to other states.

It's also federal-only, meaning you still have to do your state returns. Most of the states in the trial have no state income tax, which makes it an ideal solution for taxpayers in those states.

Expect it to expand to all 50 states in the coming years, presuming Republicans don't somehow manage to legislate it into oblivion like usual.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in AI spam is already starting to ruin the internet

That used to be Google, when they were interested in providing quality results and showing ads alongside those results, instead of just.. being an ad company.

Before that, it was Yahoo, when they were interested in providing quality results, and showing ads, instead of just being an ad company.

Before that, it was AltaVista, when they were...

...Ask Jeeves...

We'll see who's next.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in They warned you: Someone allegedly used a politician's cloned voice to interfere with an election | It will most assuredly not be the last time this happens

The "government backed" part is ostensibly about a government setting up the framework and like, requiring it be used for official documents.

It wouldn't be too hard to stick a private signing key on say, your driver's license / ID / passport, for instance.

It's a complex issue, though, that sits on how much you trust whoever runs the system at some point.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in Computer scientist shows how to tamper with Georgia voting machine, in election security trial: “All it takes is five seconds and a Bic pen.”

It's not everywhere.

States that do vote by mail are just like you describe -- paper ballots collected and counted by computer, with the paper preserved.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in Online travel agent allows customers to filter out Boeing 737 Max planes

No. The "Contract of Carriage" that airlines create between you and them when you buy a ticket explicitly disclaims any liability for stuff like that. Delta's for domestic flights has, under "Rule 2", the following:

Delta will exercise reasonable efforts to transport you and your baggage from your origin to your destination with reasonable dispatch, but published schedules, flight times, aircraft types, seat assignments, and similar details reflected in the ticket or Delta’s published schedules are not guaranteed and form no part of this contract. Delta may substitute alternate Carriers or aircraft, change its schedules, delay or cancel flights, change seat assignments, and alter or omit stopping places shown on the ticket as required by its operations in Delta’s sole discretion. Delta’s sole liability in the event of such changes is set forth in Rule 22. Delta is not responsible or liable for making connections, failing to operate any flight according to schedule, changing the schedule or any flight, changing seat assignments or aircraft types, or revising the routings by which Delta carries the passenger from the ticketed origin to destination.

Source: https://www.delta.com/us/en/legal/contract-of-carriage-dgr (click the "plain language PDF" version)

Every airline has basically the same contract. They can do whatever the fuck they want as long as they get you from A to B. They don't even have to use a plane, or get you there on time.

evatronic , 5 months ago to Technology in Cable Firms to FTC: We Shouldn’t Have to Let Users Cancel Service With a Click

Shit, Comcast has a pretty decent change of charging you for the hardware even if you do return it.