dathinab

private from whom

large companies, that should work

the state if it does an criminal investigation, that won't work, also at least for now there is no need to do so if you don't to anything criminal. Sure if fascists take over that would change but they then also would ban any system which would allow avoiding their gaze so not sure it's relevant tbh.

and as things are currently you have to far more worry about US companies and state knowing about what transactions which are legal but you want to keep private then about your local EU government

no

it's a practical doable improvement to the existing system in the existing legal framework

the outcome might be similar but there is a big difference in intend and framing there

wrong assumption

Taler is _not_ a fully anonymous payment system nor does it claims so.

It solves two specific problems:

- merchants get way more personal information about you then they actually need (merchants as e.g. your grocery store)

- alternative payments system implementations not owned by visa

non of this points include, or pretend to include, that your transactions are anonymous to auditors. Taler is in it's documentation pretty clear about that. It's a improvement to existing payment systems in the framework and limitations of existing payment transactions.

For being a honeypot you normally discrepancy between disclosed information and actual situation or other way to try to trick people to disclose things they don't want to disclose.

Just because some improvement to existing payment systems isn't hitting some legally impossible ideal doesn't make it a honeypot or any other way malicious.

the anonymity of payment is between customer and merchant,

and much much less so wrt. (customer,merchent)-> auditor aspect.

It's also more German laws you have to worry about then EU regulators, as the German laws based on the regulation are noticeable more strict then what the EU requires.

And while this laws do apply to all transactions, they don't require the customer to be identified in every transaction. Instead it's a risk based model. E.g. you local grocery store doesn't check you identity when you buy some groceries with cash. Even if you buy with card no one checks if that is your card and the information the card transaction shared does not fulfill the data collection requirements for the highest risk transaction.

This is why Taler can work, _it_ has enough information to do risk and fraud detection for many "daily" low risk transaction. And for very high risk transactions the merchant anyway has to identify you out of band and can't rely on the card transaction information. Through I guess somewhere in between is still a gray area not sure how Taler handles that.

Most important reading context:

- this are rules created to be (kinda/mostly) uniformly applied across all projects at a Google Scale company

Having used rust at work since roughly ~1.0 days I have come to a realization:

- the style guides which work best for "blindly uniformly applied across all kind of projects/teams/people" are not the same as "my preferred style" _in a lot of ways_

- similar they are often not "the best" in every case but they are "uniformly applicable without having to make opinionated decisions" i.e. they don't cause frictions in review or when writing the code due to "style only"-decision without a clear good answer

As a more generic example. There are a lot of frameworks/style guides which lead to related logic being split across 3+ small files in different folders instead of having related code "close together". And this can be a huge pain and isn't how I would manage personal projects. BUT putting code close together will sometimes just not work for various reasons (often shared logic/cross cutting concerns) at which point you will have to make some compromise where/how to place the code which has no simple "no brain used schema-f" solution you can blindly apply no matter what. This can lead to friction. Once too many people touch the same code this tend to become a huge mess, too. So the companies use style guides which split things apart. Even through the outcome is for all the simple cases noticeable worse to work with. As it does scale to large teams, very varying skill levels and many people working on the same code.

It's a bit surprising that this took ~1.5days to end up on HN.

I mean it makes sense.

Demand was on a constant down trends. From PCs, servers over light bulbs to electric based heating (heat pumps and IR heat lamps instead of "direct" electric heating + better insulation) everything has got _way_ more efficient. But also a lot of high energy need industry has moved of from the UK (or most 1st world countries) for decades by now.

A short (not proper) lookup show that even if you where to replace _all_ cars in the UK with electric cars the total need for that would be 30TWh/y while the UK produces ~322TWh/y so less then a 10% increase (in relation to production, not consumption).

The only thing which has caused a mayor hickup more or less all countries long term plan for electricity production is AI.

But not because GPGPU compute is that inefficient, it has gotten way more efficient. But instead because of how insanely much compute AI needs.

probably yes

withholding security updates seems to avoid a law which requires rolling out security updates seems very much like something which needs to be fixed one way or another

the more I learn about how Google handles releases the more this looks like there being a need for anti trust actions

if that is the case then it should be brought to the respective overseen regulatory body, weather it is for them to clarify that this is not a valid interpretation of the law (it's at least clearly in conflict with the spirit of the law) and intentionally delaying public releases this way is a no-go or weather it is to amend the law to make it more explicitly illegal

either way if that is true it looks like a very intentional abuse/misinterpretation of existing regulations

but the number of small to medium sized companies which really want to run (some of) the AI usage under their control and are willing to drop some 100ks on it aren't that few (especial for non US companies given the state the US is in)

> firms finds that human code review forms a significant “bottleneck” for the overall efficiency of AI coding tools

true, but what if you just don't

use skills & multipasses to keep code clean and compact (which does work if you do it right, but drives up the cost)

use a different AI to review the first AI

give it a short not in depth human review, _except_ for anything security critical

rely on lintable language specific limitations (e.g. rust no unsafe, typing, white/banned lists of imports, no eval, language sandbox etc.) to reduce what can go wrong outside of the small part of properly reviewed code (and yes, this makes languages like C & C++ close to a no-go as many of the previous points are just too brittle)

I can not say I like this idea, I really really don't.

But I have seen a small startup having rather large success with it (at least during initial bootstrap time, rest will have to be seen), so as much as this idea repels me I fear this will become somewhat of an standard. But as mentioned they also did a _lot_ more then "just dropping in" AI. (Also maybe worth a shoot out is them doing decent requirements engineering, sure using AI, but I have seen way to many places skipping it fully at a hidden but extremely high long term cost)

I also have seen the opposites, large blobs of not well written AI generated code which produces a slew of subtle easy to overlook bugs & inconsistencies (partially due to giving the AI wrong requirements due to not having done requirements enginering) which passes tests but will come back to bite you later. This did drain teams hard. Not only did it eat a lot of time for reviewing, but also those kind of "not how humans would have messed it up" bugs drained even more time. Maybe worst all the new time drains where not the kind of work devs like to do, so that drained motivation to a point where it can affect productivity.

it's really is not the same at all

Redhead limits third party distribution

Google _sells_ third party distribution but forbids the third party to also provide products of a 4th party.

Both can be legally and ethically be discussed.

But one is open source being less open then it should be.

But the other "(effectively) forbids selling of a product of another vendor in context of duopoly".

That the product is based on a open source from the 1st party is overall irrelevant here.

I.e. this isn't really about open source, this is about _very_ fundamental rules of (proper working) capitalism being breached in ways which iff widely tolerated are very likely to lead to economical & innovation decline and long term collapse sooner or later.

not quite, any government can technically force a breakup, wrt. any business done in their country (which nearly always happens through sub. But that is a huge mess/often not practical.

but a break up is also kinda the most extreme case

more common is specific requirements being enforced onto the company and fining them severely if they continue to refuse to comply (while also still doing business in given country)

> The much more interesting recent news IMO is that Google is not allowing (non-Samsung) OEMs to sell devices with GrapheneOS:

how is that legal??

that sounds like a very clean cut case of thinks companies aren't allowed to do under fair market lawes

if you are a school or similar which ordered a large stack of them in the last two years then yes, especially if multiple such organizations join together on a legal case.

In the end "help with migration to" isn't the same supporting the existing product.

And if you advertised a product with 10 year support that _is_ legally binding (in the EU) and a clear cut case of you losing around 10-20% of the advertised value.

Given that legal costs might be to some degree covered by legal insurance and it being a clean cut case this is likely worth the money. But also a case where google can "just settle and not care" as in many cases schools did more things like forcing parents to buy chrome books then buying them themself, so it's unlikely to amass any relevant damage amount for Google.

More funny would be if the judge rules "10 years promised? You are cable of delivering 10 years?! You have to deliver it! And for all chrome books bought [8;10[ years before the deadline not just the suing party".

through just from scanning the feature side

> Your files and your account [..]

> Ports and windows on the host

it is quite likely that you can break out even with no linux containers related CVEs. --isolate does seem to fix that somehow but is explicit opt. in and "more painful to use" ... (which creates a UX challenge unlikely to end well from a security POV).

How does it differ from existing tools kinda do exactly same, like e.g. toolbx. (And to a slightly lesser degree flatpack, snap, etc.)?

And what prevented adopting/supporting existing projects, instead of further tool ecosystem fragmentation? (kinda the same question, just differently phrased)

since when are executives statements meant to produce more investment into them trustable?

even more so it is reasonable to assume their (executive) statement was a simplification ignoring small for the overall statement irrelevant exceptions

like ignoring there being a factory build which is small and only meant for older nodes producing embedded chips and is for the car industry only

because honestly while the factory does matter for Bosh, it doesn't really make much difference for the larger picture of chip production in the EU

> whole statement

simplified you can think of a statement outside of a transaction as starting an implicit transaction just for itself

and (normal) locks are in general hold until the end of the transaction (while also allowing re-entrance from subsequent queries on the same transaction)

practically

- there are edge cases (e.g. Advisory Locks, but in general you don't want to use them)

- you normally(^1) would want to run your pg migration as a single transaction (but there are edge cases). And in turn the OPs idea of pre-acquiring locks would be for the whole transaction anyway. Plus it was just a general idea, so the end result could be more like an "expect lock" statement maybe with some scan ahead ability then an "acquire lock".

(^1): Exceptions include certain operations which need to be in different transactions, and some painful situations where too much data is touched/changed/computed and you need a lot of very careful handling you common small-ish PG DB use-case isn't exposed to (and in turn a lot of "naive but often good enough" migration setups can't handle either...)

Teams refuses to work on Firefox, or at least did so not so long ago (like as in it "tells you no won't try" not as in "has bugs"). Same for slack.

I think to remember that the most absurd thing was that if you tell Teams "this is chrome" (even when it's FF) it did work just fine.

best bet is currently GrapheneOS and that is still Adroid and will likely have to fight an up-hill battle in coming years

there are some (decent & serious) Efforts to make Linux apps/UI tools phone format compatible

but for various reasons (mostly hardware) stuff like e.g. the Libre phone feel more like toys for enthusiast and very committed people then things a "average" person can just use.

The biggest problem in the future seems to be the regulatory capture/lobby induced "well meant but bad done" laws, wrt. to misguided device attestation laws which "happen" to in effect require you to have a Google Android or iPhone in practice even through that not actually being needed for the law to work.

this line

>> > and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up

is for how how to have a reliable acceptable Linux experience and I have less issues with rare occasional hick ups then I had on Windows and Mac in the past. But that is long ago. Through just looking at all the AD/snooping issues, how often windows seem to have broken updates etc. this is way nicer on Linux and seem to be still not worse on Linux then Mac.

> > but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues

the example here with my gaming setup _doesn't_ require "have enough Linux know-how",

after the initial setup it so far just did works

The initial setup was just running a trivial install + ~2 simple to do and find through search, but should-be-unneeded initial tweaks (both Steam specific).

through I currently happen to only care about games both available on Steam and running on Linux without Linux specific manual setup/tweaks (like Silk Song, Nine Sols, Detroit Become Human (but all native 4k)). And it's all AMD and no "unusual" consumer hardware components.

if it's just about connectivity then yes, that should be normal, a OS should only switch the default interface _iff_ the interface it switches to is up and ready.

Idk. about desktop Linux, but my phone does the (WLAN -> Mobile) switch just fine.

If it's about _not reconnecting_ (e.g. which for many apps might require some manual pause/resume of streamed data or similar), then things are more complex as you can't keep your IP, so it then depends on weather the application uses HTTP3/Quick or similar protocols in implementations which are designed to be able to freely roll over to different IP addresses.

So both yes and no :)

> “just works”

if you use distros which ship the latest _stable_ release of software

and have enough Linux know how to fix the occasional hick up

but it can sometimes "just work" for a long time without any issues, something I haven't exactly had with either Windows or Mac

like my current gaming setup from a year ago(roughly) was setup once, I had to fiddle some minor tweaks during setup and since then it "just works tm". No issues, not know how needed, nothing. (At least for the Games I play.) But also not Nvidea which has in recent years increasingly more QA issues across _all_ OSes and _all_ hardware including their supper expensive AI cards... But that is more a Nvidea then a Linux Problem, by now, was different in the past.

for a huge amount of "non tech-people", the thing is:

- they mainly look at the first Google result and sometimes if it looks "not convincing" the next few. Especially on a phone where the screen space will cut out most results without scrolling.

- a lot of them write (partial) questions instead of "search queries"

- the first result is an AI response which is very good at being "convincing looking" even if it's plain wrong. (And the others they might look at are nearly guaranteed bought.)

soooo

I don't think much changes for most people.

Sure Google Search AI response links some sources (but not many and it's not that rare for them to not really be sources for the _full_ answer...).

But so do (some) AI agents.

Through the naivety with which I see people trusting AI is very scary.

This makes me wonder if following statement:

> Of 139 studies on the effect of AI on critical thinking, 67 reported only positive effects of AI use.

is a side effect of the studies using sub-par methodology or if I have some observation bias.

Like the problem is many people filer trust by "who they ask", "if the question is hard", "if people might have a reason to lie". But the problem is AI works so differently that you can't trust it in _any_ question, even causal questions where (close to) no westerner(^1) would consider lying to you and everyone would either know they don't know or have the right answer...

(^1): Some cultures for "politeness" reasons value "giving a answer" over "saying I don't know", especially if the person won't see you again. That is getting much better AFIK in such cultures but can be a problem when e.g. asking for the way...

it really isn't in practice, only if you take things out of context of the rest of the law, the clearly communicated intend of the law (which matters for judges) and of how law in general works

This also isn't reverse construction in any form, just because something might end up influencing voting behavior doesn't mean its "political". Advertising for artistic work covering common social topics doesn't make this political ads. Nor does advertising for documentations, even if they cover a topic which could influence votes. If you look at the definition in the actual regulation that is pretty clear.IMHO

> enforcing a broad ban to ensure they comply.

that _really_ doesn't seem what is happening

an AD for a theater play is by no standard political advertisement

Political advertisement in the regulations context is reasonable clearly defined.

An AD for a theater play is in general very clearly _not_ covered by it.

To add to it: Civil rights & feminism (in it's official non hijacked definition, aka. equal fair treatment of man and women) are fundamental rights in the EU, something the regulation very clearly states it doesn't want to impeach on. So arguments that you could accidentally misread the regulation to include banning _non-political advertisement about artistic work covering fundamental rights are a bit absurd_.

Anywhere here is the definition of political advertisement in given regulation:

> political advertising’ means the preparation, placement, promotion, publication, delivery or dissemination, by any means, of a message, normally provided for remuneration or through in-house activities or as part of a _political advertising campaign_:

> (a)by, for or on behalf of a _political actor_, unless it is of a purely private or a purely commercial nature; or

> (b) which is liable and designed to _influence the outcome of an election or referendum_, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process, at Union, national, regional or local level;

(emphasis mine)

So to put it simple: Meta is engaging in censure.

Stretching the term political to include more or less everything (like any topic people have opinions about a politician might speak about) is IMHO a pretty dishonest misinterpretation, especially given that it isn't even everything, but "everything Meta doesn't want to get involved with due to the current political environment".

At best this misinterpretation is due to laziness, at worst pushed by malicious actors in the US.

Given that Meta is a US company and the currently people in power there find this topics quit unpleasant and Metas long history of not faithfully complying with law and allowing all kind of ADs this looks very bad for them.

the thing is a lot of the legal work which will go through this is drafting 100 and 1 variations of draft versions of standard contracts not containing any trade secrets where the contract can be drafted with "replacement/place holder names"

the kind of work mostly done by juniors not yet through their final exam and other "non" lawyers etc.

so it's a slippery slope of "lets just use it for <this> things where it doesn't matter" and then out of laziness and convenience it creeps into all the other places (at least for drafts).

against it, it's an argument against aristocracy

think about it how do people become aristocrats if not exactly by the mechanisms which make them least suited to rule given the comments argument?

Also one very common case of people being drawn to power but not suited for it if people which grew up with disposition that having that power is their "birthright" or similar. Such a disposition means from their POV losing the power, even if its due to them acting incompetent or misusing it, is no different then theft or worse "rebellion" and in turn they tend to be very willing to use a lot of violence and cruelty to keep it.

so it's really an argument against any form of government which (in it's most common ways) involves people "sizing" power and tending to at least somewhat pass it forward through generations. And aristocracy in how it normally is practiced definitely falls under that.

if anything it's an argument in favor of democracy, just with a lot of added rules against populism, spreading of misinformation, systematically railing up people, qualifications needed to get a position of power etc.

anyway if we don't fix modern attention economics being a perfect mechanism to propagate propaganda, misinformation and hate content we will not be getting there and any current attempts to fix this seem fairly limited in effect