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TechRemarker

1,838 karma · joined February 15, 2011

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TechRemarker··on iOS 26.2 to allow third-party app stores in Japan ahead of regulatory deadline
Doubt they would have been considered “goodwill”. Investors would complain they are doing their fiscal responsibilities. Customers and companies would complain they didn’t do it soon enough and still didn’t do enough. And if people started having issues with their phones because of side loading they would not blame themselves they would blame Apple for allowing them to do so and potentially hurting the brand. Vision Pro as a test of hardware capabilities seems to be going as one would expect at the current price points. Once they release their first consumer focused glasses as an accessible price point, that will be the real test of the product category.
TechRemarker··on iOS 26.2 to allow third-party app stores in Japan ahead of regulatory deadline
On the other hand if long ago they backed down and lowered fees and allowed more control, aside from the potential security and privacy concerns that could negatively affect the brand, companies would have just then wanted more. As Epic has said they think they should have to pay nothing for all that Apple provides. So not saying all Apple’s choices and timing were right or best, but giving up previously wouldn’t have prevented all of this but rather just lowered the bar and making it easier for companies and countries to make it easier to lower it even further.
TechRemarker··on Affinity Studio now free
Been curious what the Oct 10 announcement would be. It seemed most likely an acquisition since they wanted enough time of not selling existing products to avoid dealing with a month of refunds. Appears Canva bought with it now being a single app that is "free" but paid for premium features. While many may rejoice at a solid free options it's certainly an unfortunate day for those who rely on it. As Canva makes money on people using the paid version so attention will be at making that version more enticing over time and free less. If people all just used the free and not the premium for AI, then they would either start charging for the "free" version or take away features from the free version to make the "choice" easier to upgrade. All in all good for Canva, and good for more casual users who can jump ship any time to free options but would be quite worrisome for those who have looked towards Affinity as the alternative to Adobe.
TechRemarker··on Why JPEG XL ignoring bit depth is genius (and why AVIF can't pull it off)
When exporting images from Lightroom Classic in JPEX XL you can choose the percent of compress or choose lossless which disable that of course. But also default to 8bit, but an option for 16bit which of course results in a much larger file. And color profile setting. So curious what they mean by it ignores bit depth?

Did some sample exports comparing JXL 8bit lossless vs JPG and JXL was quite a bit bigger. Same for doing lossy 100 comparison or 99 comparison of both. When setting JXL to 80%, 70% see noticeably savings but had thought the idea was JXL full quality essentially for much smaller sizes.

To be fair the 70% does look very similar to 100% but then again the JPEG 70% vs 100% also look very similar on an Apple XDR Monitor. the 70% or 80% etc on both jpeg and jpeg xl i do see visual differences in areas like on shoes where there is mesh.

JXL comes with lots of compatibility challenges since while things were picking up with Apple's adoption it seems to have halted since and apps like Evoto, and Topaz not adding support among many others. And Apple's still not full support and no progress on that. So unless Chrome does a 180 again, think AVIF and JXL will both end up stagnating and most sticking with JPG. For Tiff though noticed significant savings lossless jxl compared to tiff so that would be a good use case except tiffs more likely ones to be edited by third party apps that most likely won't support the format.

TechRemarker··on Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
On that page though it looks like most all the features are not available with E2EE, event timeline, person detection, search you name it. So imagine few if any use it, since alternative options that can locally do all that and still have E2EE.
TechRemarker··on EVs are depreciating faster than gas-powered cars
"which is influenced more by recharge cycles and straight up passage of time" would seem similar to "mileage" since both increase in general the passage of time and driving. But yes, driving two cars equal amount of time presumably the ICE will wear down far more than the equivalent EV so the title is quite misleading to those looking at a glance.
TechRemarker··on Apple Renames 'Apple TV+' to 'Apple TV'
My immediate assumption is this is to preface an Apple box rebranding, especially being announced right before new hardware is this is is the first of additional rebranding to simplify and avoid confusion. The Apple box/hardware could renamed Apple Hub and then the one with a display rumored could be Apple Hub+ or Apple Hub Display etc. Lots of options just hopefully it’s not keep everything the same name.
TechRemarker··on OpenAI’s latest research paper demonstrates that falsehoods are inevitable
The rss feed title didn’t seem to align with the content. As more said they hallucinate because they were trained to give answers and a “I’m don’t know” is penalized as much as a wrong answer. And they say they don’t fix this because if 30% of time people got a I dunno they would stop using it. I don’t see how telling a user when they aren’t confident of the answer would cause ChatGPT to stop completely tomorrow. People like answers but most assume the answers are correct and would be very helpful to know when the bot isn’t sure. It could say there isn’t enough credible information or their is a lot of conflicting information on the matter and then say what those different potential answers are or how they user might confirm the answer etc. Seems like many options. And you could always let the user choose in preferences if they’d always prefer answer or not.
TechRemarker··on Perplexity offers to buy Google Chrome for $34.5B
"benevolent" is an interesting word choice. I wouldn't consider them having positive intentions for users, but rather focused on financial gain and market power at any cost. Though if Apple owned would be anti non Apple customers, if most other companies owned would end up monetizing it as well but without the resources of Google. Or if government owned would remain stagnant. So not sure what the right path is.
TechRemarker··on IRS head says free Direct File tax service is 'gone'
Anytime big news like this, news report on it, but the specific news channels do not mention, at all or minimize it position it in a way of for instance.. got rid of a terrible tool that didnt work well and was inefficient etc. So instead of focusing on removing free tax service so people have to pay again, people think it's a good thing because x y z, or even if they you ask any they don't know why its a good thing, they say someone they trust says its a good thing and people they don't like says a bad thing, and that's enough.
TechRemarker··on Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online
The article would seem correct since "obscene" could be twisted to mean whatever they want. As the people making the ruling can say the average person believes x.
TechRemarker··on Toyota RAV4 topples Tesla Model Y as best-selling car
Just wished the RAV4 was as modern and refined and tech forward as the newer comparable Hyundai’s. Reliability of Toyota with the tech and refinement of Hyundai would be unbeatable for the segment. The new rav4 is a step in the right direction at least.
TechRemarker··on Apple Blocks Fortnite's Return to iOS App Store, Epic Claims
They didn’t ban them for publicly criticizing, they banned them for intentionally breaking the rules. So yes, this makes devs more afraid of knowingly breaking the rules like how jail makes people more afraid of breaking the law. And yes fornite team has been quite a bully in their incessant tweets but glad to see Apple not stopping to their level.
TechRemarker··on After 16 years, we're renewing the StackOverflow Brand
Crazy how much I used SO for so long and yet how happily i switched to Reddit and LLMs 100% and haven’t once look back. Over the years it became a place to fear posting since their no matter how much you researched before posting you’d be met by an army of people noting it’s posted in the wrong place and off topic and closed and then years later you see it incredibly voted up for being so helpful. Changing the brand seems like rearranging chairs on the titanic or worse, on the bottom of the ocean.
TechRemarker··on Apple's mouse is so bad Tim Cook uses another brand at work (2024)
False: https://wccftech.com/tim-cool-does-not-prefer-logitech-mx-ma...
TechRemarker··on SignalGate Is Driving the Most US Downloads of Signal Ever
I don't see any part they are saying this is Signal's fault (vs the fault of the people who committed the "horrendous and criminal" acts? Which part are you referring to?
TechRemarker··on The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
Would love to hear from HN on why such an otherwise incredible popular site is so often blacklisted or censored vs what is allowed. Why not let users vote instead like other news? Or if truly not being censored bring receipts on what’s happening?
TechRemarker··on Every .gov Domain
Did you open the link? The the very top says Data Source: https://manage.get.gov/api/v1/get-report/current-full. Public API provides them all, this is just a website to more easily view that data.
TechRemarker··on Google removed 2.36M apps from Google Play using AI threat detection
False headline. No where in article does it say they were removed. Just talks about using AI to prevent new apps from coming to the store in the first place.
TechRemarker··on CA, NY Attorneys General sue to resume federal funding of Medicaid, FEMA, PEPFAR
Unfortunately, "letting it happen" other than of course many people potentially suffering or dying, it presumably wouldn't have much of an affect on voters, as it would simply be spun that it's somehow the previous Administrations fault, or the other parties fault etc. Thankfully we still have the courts, even as more bias judges get seated.
TechRemarker··on Calling women 'household objects' now permitted on Facebook
He's on the "winning" side. Even Apple (Tim Cook) along with all the other major CEO's are groveling understandably since the upcoming administration could severely damage any of their businesses once in power.
TechRemarker··on How WhatsApp for business changed the world
In the US, while many I know use iMessage or Android send via SMS/RCS, most all my friends and family also have Facebook Messenger and most all seem to end up sending there since one doesn't have to worry about if Apple/Android, or which features are supported etc. The only big downside is Facebook Messenger strips all meta data, so unlike say Apple Messages, not good for sending photos to friends family since won't have the correct date, location, etc (which you can turn on/off on Apple Messages), and with messages can send as large or as many as I want in one message so they can easily add to their Photo library with a click. With Facebook Messenger, even with the new HD feature (you annoying have to click each time), you still have limitations on how many and size you can send. Hoping Messenger or or WhatsApp eventually seamlessly support that. Some apps say they do but you have to add photo as a "file" which ends up with lots of down sides from a user experience. Also if WhatsApp is so popular hopefully eventually they let you merge your Messenger data into What's App since can't imagine starting in a new app and losing a lifetime of messages history. Was excited for RCS, but so far, has been problematic where sometimes RCS is enabled for a contact other times for same contact its not. Or slow to send, though is preserving meta data it seem now. But no support for replies, which is a deal breaker and of course not encrypted at all.
TechRemarker··on Billions of Gmail users at risk from sophisticated new AI hack
They didn’t know it was from Google Sydney until they looked up the number after talking to the person. So when the call first came in, yes it would have been from a known number/person.
TechRemarker··on Billions of Gmail users at risk from sophisticated new AI hack
Not sure how this would fool the most adept people, since regardless of what someone says they will never ask you to provide credentials. And when in doubt just contact support directly. Also a red flag would have been them saying account was compromised and downloaded data a week ago. Google wouldnt admit that since could end up on hacker news next day and crash stock. They would wait for person to contact them or resolve quietly.
TechRemarker··on Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"
Yes, very odd, since the class name for that new checkbox is even, "login-lawsuit".
TechRemarker··on If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
AI is helping more people code problems they might not be able to on their own or help people do it more quickly for a particular issue but don’t think that in general is making people better coders just like Google auto correct isn’t making people better spellers.
TechRemarker··on Show HN: Selectric – macOS Search for Gmail, Outlook, Drive, Slack
2000s, but yes, I miss having that. Though Raycast is a million years ahead of this product, and allows you to do a search that searches gmail on web etc, or if you email client supports apple script that can do there as well, and of course lots of chatgpt integrations and gemini for searching outlook, gmail etc.
TechRemarker··on Warning: DNS encryption in Little Snitch 6.1 may occasionally fail
Before Sequoia when using OpenDNS for VPN, could be on VPN and iMessage and other apps still work, but since Sequoia, when on VPN iMessage (text messages) etc no longer work. Once I disconnect to VPN all goes through. Is this related at all? Do have macOS firewall enabled. But not block all incoming connections.
TechRemarker··on Thoughts and Observations in the Wake of Apple's 'It's Glowtime' Keynote
Google and Steam charge 30% for their top rate as well right? So assuming you are referring to tech companies and not Apple in particular?
TechRemarker··on Is My Blue Your Blue?
Sorry not sure I understand. Yes, with each color that appears the I (or any user) has to pick which color they see more of, blue or green. Since every color shown unless presumably exactly 50% between green and blue, will either be more blue or more green. So you/I/users have to pick if they see more green or blue. The person next to you might see a hint of blue and you may see a hint of green for the same color since our eyes all work differently. UPDATE-Oh you may have been asking that of the person I was replying to initially.
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