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Counterpoint to this doomerism, obviously region specific but TFA didn't bother specifying where in the world they're talking about with their broad brush statements about "downcycling" and "70% virgin plastic": https://www.startribune.com/recycling-real-twin-cities-minne...

Where is the contradiction in believing both that we use too much plastic and should act on individual and governmental levels to reduce it, and that sending a PET bottle to the landfill is a child's tantrum and not some heroic defiance of the plastic industry?

Global Protect is up there with Citrix Netscaler and Fortigate SSLVPN in the list of "secure" remote access products that no organization should be using without considering the fact that another easy RCE is going to come out roughly every 12 months and possibly lead to a ransomware incident.

I don't find anything outlined in the post particularly bad, but what does bother me is that it seems like Kagi's founder cares a lot about what people think on Discord. Like the author said, most people never touch it and don't know or care what is said on there. If you want to engage with people, why not do it in a more open space? The closed nature of Discord chats means the only way to reference them is through screenshots, and that breeds drama as we're seeing here.

Jellyfin is compatible with the Infuse media player on Apple TV. I don't have one but have used it on other Apple things and love it, it's actually a bigger issue with Windows because I haven't found anything nearly as good on Windows as Infuse is on Mac.

YMMV of course but Jellyfin supports manual tagging well enough for my uses. No need to change filenames and break folder structures you set up for easier navigation in file browsers (as I did), you can click the "Identify" option on a file/folder and search your enabled databases by title or IMDB number. Once you tell it what TV show a folder is for, all the episodes seem to get automagically recognized. It's just that first step that doesn't happen by itself when the folders aren't named "correctly", and you could probably get around it by using Tiny Media Manager to mass-write NFO files (which Jellyfin recognizes).

I don't know if I should have expected different (not really familiar with individual game journalists) but for a video labeled "Cold Take" it felt more like listening to a series of hot takes.

>This is not a $200 million game, this is a $5 million game at best, the rest was spent on sipping Singapore slings on the sandy beaches.

Sure you don't want to have a more substantive view of how executives mismanaged the project in your "cold take" about poor executive performance?

It is as much about perception and convenience as anything else. When I talk about smartphones with non-technical people, the top complaint (against both Apple and Google) is that they try to trap customers by making it hard to move your stuff from iOS to Android or vice versa. They're running into issues for different reasons (forgotten passwords, data migration tool not getting everything) but it's fundamentally the same complaint: why does this require some specific procedure instead of just working the way I expect it to work? This may just be the grumpy nerd in me talking, but all of this would be a lot easier if mobile apps dealing with interchangeable things like photos and text saved user data to files instead of inscrutable databases by default.

In my opinion as someone who just uses these Linux DEs, it seems like it would be better if they focused on “safe” content and left anything scriptable to be distributed through other means. The security risks along with bad experiences with outdated and broken software in the past have convinced me to never use these features, which is a shame as people have probably made some neat themes and widgets. On the post, I don’t buy the comparison with AUR and PPA. Whatever the risks with those systems (and don’t get me wrong, they can be significant), the end user has usually concluded based on reputation from elsewhere that they want to install a particular application and they use the AUR or PPA system to get the job done. The theme stores on desktop environments, by contrast, seem like they’re going to be the way that users discover small pieces of content that are never going to have much of an external reputation. To use such programs safely you would have to read the source code of anything you’ve thinking about using, and not many people have the ability and time/willingness to do so.

I don't think it's necessarily better or worse than email. As the hiring manager quoted in the article said, for candidates who made it to the final phases of the process it can seem more cordial. But I can see how it might be cruel to do it to new graduates, who are both potentially less ready for rejection and more busy with the job search process.

That said, it can be horribly executed. Last year after several interviews with a large company, I got an email from a recruiter who hadn't been involved in the process up to that point, telling me to expect a short call within a certain time window. I kept my calendar clear, but didn't get a call, so I sent a polite email offering a couple of times the next day to reschedule. After hearing nothing back for a few days, I got another email with another window. The recruiter also missed that window. This went on for a few more days until I suggested that they just get to the point over email, a few minutes later the recruiter called unscheduled to tell me I didn't get the job. At that point I feel like it was more awkward for the company (big one, name begins with "A"). I think I might have audibly laughed when the recruiter asked if I'd be interested in other positions there.

The same NIST document (800-63) that recommends against password expiration also recommends against complexity requirements, instead organizations are supposed to develop a list of bad passwords that would likely be used in an external dictionary attack.

People understandably get really fired up by the idea of not having to change their password every 90 days, but forget that the guidelines are a package that contains a lot of "shall"s (no password expiration is a mere "should") that would be more painful for organizations stuck with a lot of legacy software, like the requirement to use two authentication factors and the use of secure authentication protocols.

I don't see anyone saying the notch on a laptop is a "good" thing that they bought the laptop to get, just people who bought a laptop for other reasons justifying why an imperfect screen shape wasn't enough to make them regret the purchase. They're not being "milked" in any way I can see.

Compare phones, where manufacturers have actually created a narrative that camera cutouts are a desirable feature. Maybe people who bought new phones because they like the cutout design are getting milked twice.

If you're referring to sales cap for the $7,500 US tax credit, that cap was removed this year: https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/electric-vehicles-for-tax-credi...

The American Library Association addresses the VHS to DVD question in a FAQ on their website. There are more in depth discussions of how libraries can legally switch between formats linked on that page. Of course, IA thinks their use is different, but the VHS analogy doesn’t work.

> Reproducing a VHS to DVD without the prior permission of the rights-holder is an infringement of copyright. This kind of reproduction is not exempt because it is not "fair use" and it does not qualify as a lawful reproduction. However, in a situation where the VHS tape is lost, stolen or deteriorating or is in an obsolete format (a 3/4" tape is obsolete because the equipment is no longer being sold, but a VHS tape is not obsolete) and is not available in the DVD format in the market for a reasonable cost, the library can make a reproduction. But if the reproduction is in a digital format (DVD is digital), then that copy cannot leave the library premises.

https://libguides.ala.org/copyright/video

I own quite a few blu-rays, mostly movies where compression artifacts on streaming versions are very noticeable. I'd get them for more movies, but I don't have infinite shelf space, nor do I want to transform my living room walls into disc storage like some of my movie buff friends did in the DVD era. Filing cabinets could work, I suppose. But the point is, streaming a purchased or pirated copy is just simpler and better, and for 90% of movies the compression doesn't impact the experience. With all due respect to Nolan's work on the home release, I'm pretty sure Oppenheimer will be in the 90%. For the remaining 10% I'd love if iTunes and the other digital movie storefronts offered a "hifi" quality download with bitrate on par with blu-ray. I know Sony has something like that for their TVs, but I mean something really available cross platform through Movies Anywhere or similar. The difficulty studios have making money on digital movies really seems self-inflicted in some ways, plenty of people out there would be converted from buying blu-rays if the price and quality of downloads improved just a bit.

The privacy policy claims that MasterCard and Goldman do not sell or share transaction data from Apple Card. I’d like clarity on how this differs from any other MasterCard but that is what it says.

Source: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-card/

The author’s mistake is thinking about the ”smart” lights in terms of systems, and the “midwit” lights in terms of products. If you look at smart lights starting with products, ignoring the connectivity and asking questions like will this pair well with my light fixtures and is it capable of the color changing or other tricks I want, then look into the best system to control those products, you won’t get caught in analysis paralysis so easily.

This advice probably doesn’t apply as much to people who want smart-everything since that can get very complicated, but if it’s mainly about lights then you’ll find compatible options for any of the major protocols.

There's an iPhone app called Lungy that monitors breathing for interactive exercises, but it requires holding the phone just right and breathing at the mic. Probably not good enough to monitor under less ideal conditions with the existing mic. Apple Watch and other smartwatches track breathing rate, but the ones I know of only give periodic estimates when conditions are right, not really real time monitoring.

XDR is a marketing term for a service that bundles or aggregates EDR with other types of enterprise level security monitoring. The endpoint part is still called EDR.

The significant thing here is that the technique should interfere with data collected by all common EDR software, rather than requiring specific tailoring for each one like most EDR bypass tricks. I’m curious about why the API protections present in Windows 11 couldn’t be brought to Windows 10.

>Multiple pieces of evidence show that Microsoft is aware of the weakness, but is not changing the API behavior retroactively on Windows 10, likely due to retro-compatibility issues.

If MS actually says that, it seems like a lame excuse.

I’m mostly talking about after, but it would be even more interesting if there are examples of high value mobile exploits being used as 0-days by more common cybercriminals as opposed to government backed spyware firms.

That’s shitty, but if that’s all enshittification means then it’s ten extra letters for nothing. Disneyland is not a “platform”, it doesn’t go through the enshittification process.

Steam charges a one-time $100 fee per game, so it’s still similar if upfront publishing costs are the issue. But certainly that $100 is less worth it if there are hardly any Mac players and thousands of Windows/Steam players.

That's not enshittification, squeezing money out of you is just how theme parks operate. The term can't really apply to Disney parks at all because there's no two sided market.

>today’s nation-state attacker’s vulnerability could become part of tomorrow’s everyday cybercriminal’s arsenal

While theoretically true, I can't find recent examples of this happening with zero-click exploits on iOS or Android. Without evidence of this being a common infection vector it's not, in my opinion, enough reason to encourage people to get rid of a working phone just because the security backports might be a bit lacking.

The more important security reason to keep up with the latest OS version is the sandboxing improvements that iOS and Android make with each update. If you assume the device will be compromised with a malicious app at some point, you want to have more protections against the malware stealing data from other apps. This is (for now) a bigger deal on Android, where malware routinely makes it into the official app store and malicious APKs are floating around all over the place. But it's worth considering on iOS too, especially if you run a lot of apps from companies that hate privacy or if iOS later allows some form of sideloading.

Satya's testimony focuses on defaults, but in a really unrealistic way:

>“Defaults are the only thing that matter,” he said, “in terms of changing user behavior.” He called the idea that it’s easy to switch “bogus.”

Maybe it's bogus on Windows, which doesn't respect search engine or browser choice, but it's one step to change the search engine on Apple's platforms which is what he's talking about here.

>Not only are the economics of the Google deal hugely favorable for Apple, he said, but Apple may also be afraid of what Google would do if it lost default status. Google has a number of hugely popular services, like Gmail and YouTube — what if Google used those apps to relentlessly promote downloading Chrome, thus teaching people to circumvent the Safari browser entirely?

Google already does this: click a link on any of their apps on iOS and it pulls up a menu asking to install Chrome or the Google app, your actual default browser being the last option. If Apple is afraid of Safari losing dominance to Chrome on iOS there's no way they'd allow this.

>The very fact that Bing has market share of any kind on Windows — which is somewhere in the teens, Nadella said, as opposed to “low, low single digits” on mobile — is proof that defaults do work.

Again this is not really a default like the default search engine on iOS, it's a situation where you have to wage an ongoing war on the OS as it constantly changes or ignores your preference. How much desktop market share would Bing have if Windows 10+ didn't open Edge and Bing for every unintentional start menu web search?

>When Mehta asked him to respond to the idea that users can easily switch search engines, he said that “my only argument against that is that users don’t switch.” His best example: Apple Maps, which started out disastrously bad but has still gained market share in the last decade because it’s preinstalled on every iPhone.

Speaking of the OS ignoring your preference, Apple Maps on iOS is another example of this. It's not like a default search engine that can be changed, it's the operating system maliciously tricking people who clearly want another service into using the one the OS maker wants.

>For Nadella, becoming Apple’s default search engine wouldn’t be about the money, at least not directly. “We needed to be less greedy and more competitive,” he explained. A sudden increase in distribution, he said, would give Bing an increase in what Nadella called “query flow,” which essentially just means more people would do more searches. More incoming searches means more data the Bing team can use to improve the search engine and more reasons for advertisers to come to the platform. An improved search engine gets used more, which means more data, and round and round it goes. This is the virtuous cycle of search engines, and Nadella believes Bing could use that cycle to quickly catch up to Google’s quality.

If the only way to make a search engine good enough to be #1 is to already be #1, as Satya seems to be implying, then it makes no sense to be in the search engine business.

>I never experienced anyone doing serious creative work in the sense of creating something on a tablet.

You must not know many illustrators, which is understandable, but I’m not sure I follow the overall point. Are you saying home users still need something to replace Windows for non leisure computing?

The issue was specific to services that used Microsoft's .NET libraries for Azure AD authentication without doing additional checks for auth token validity [1], which was not "all of Microsoft". There's no public list of what components are used where AFAIK, we just know that MS says forged auth tokens were successfully used on Exchange Online email. It is sensationalizing to say the entire Azure cloud was hacked.

This is not to downplay how bad Microsoft's security lapses were, and how bad their announcements were. The most horrifying part to me, besides the need for "premium" logs to detect a breach which I'd been complaining about before this, was how PR seemed to blame the Exchange Online team for misusing the authentication libraries, but later they updated the libraries and said the token validation issue was "corrected using the updated libraries". That feels like internal blame shifting out in public.

[1] https://msrc.microsoft.com/blog/2023/09/results-of-major-tec...

While I agree with others that upgrading an older flagship phone isn't as compelling as it used to be, the report says that sales of premium smartphones were still growing:

>Canalys says, "Apple and Samsung boosted their premium segment shipments with 25% and 23% growth respectively in Q2 2023."

Instead, it's more about the sub flagship phones and especially less popular brands:

>The biggest loss on the chart is actually "others," down 43 percent, likely representing the further consolidation of the Android market. These are your OnePluses, your HMD/Nokias, and trashy pre-paid vendors like Blu. Canalys explains some of this by saying the low-end market "will continue to struggle as prepaid demand dwindles."

That may be due to inflation squeezing the low end market harder, Google eating their lunch with very attractive $350-$500 offerings, and growth in sales of used/refurbished flagships [1].

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/10/idc_secondhand_phones...

I’m more than a little skeptical that scams would be less of a problem if specific countries cracked down on large operations. For one thing it’s not clear how you’d ever get the whole world on board. Pressuring India is hard enough, try Myanmar, a place that doesn’t get along with the West at all and is already a hotspot for phone scams targeting Chinese speakers. And if centralized, relatively open operations overseas were no longer possible, it would likely become more like other types of fraud run by local gangs. So I’m all for pressuring India to crack down on scammers, but I don’t see how that would reduce the desire to tighten software controls on PCs.

It’s annoying but pretty clearly about differentiating the Pro model, at least at first. This has been Apple’s strategy at least since the XS/XR: the high end model gets a better camera and higher performance SoC to entice consumers who want the best as well as the actual professional users. And recently they’ve apparently moved to having the base iPhone lag a year on the chip. USB3 requires a specific chip so the Pro gets it first. The question is, does the base iPhone get USB3 with the A17 series SoC next year, or does it join the camera as something to differentiate the Pro series? It would make sense to keep it in the pro model since fast USB transfers is something few consumers care about but pros care a lot about.