Techdirt. – Verizon, AT&T Customers Sue To Reverse T-Mobile Merger, Saying It Raised Everybody’s Prices

Nov 072023
 

We just got done noting how pretty much all of the criticism of the Sprint T-Mobile merger by economists and consumer advocates wound up being true. The deal has resulted in more than 10,000+ eliminated jobs, steady price hikes, annoying new fees, a weaker T-Mobile brand, and a lower quality product overall. It also clearly distracted T-Mobile from competent network security.
T-Mobile’s reddit forums are filled with employees saying the disruptive spirit of the company has been dead since the merger. T-Mobile customers are annoyed by endless new restrictions and price hikes.
But Verizon and AT&T customers are also pissed, and are part of a new lawsuit against T-Mobile arguing that the merger raised prices for everybody…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/07/verizon-att-customers-sue-to-reverse-t-mobile-merger-saying-it-raised-everybodys-prices/

 2023-11-07  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Verizon, AT&T Customers Sue To Reverse T-Mobile Merger, Saying It Raised Everybody’s Prices

jwz – Happy They Live day to all who celebrate

Nov 042023
 

35 years ago today, They Live debuted at #1 at the box office. In honor of my favorite documentary about the Reagan administration, here are some highlights from my OBEY tag: 2016, just before the election: They Live and the secret history of the Mozilla logo: One of my most popular posts of all time. “I’m going to draw a line through 1930s agitprop, Ronald Reagan, methane-breathing zombie space aliens, the Mozilla logo, Barack Obama and the International Commiunist Conspiracy. It’s a long walk, so please stick with me.” I ended with, “In this upcoming presidential election, please vote against the methane-breathing zombie space alien.” Reader, my supplication did not work. …

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/11/happy-they-live-day-to-all-who-celebrate/

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Hackaday – BeagleV Catches Fire With The BeagleV-Fire

Nov 042023
 

A new BeagleBoard is on the way, full of FPGA hotness: the BeagleV-Fire has been announced. The new $150 Single-Board Computer (SBC) from the pioneering open source BeagleBoard company is built around a RISC-V chip that has FPGA features built in. The BeagleV-Fire is built around the snappily named Microchip PolarFire MPFS025T FCVG484E, a System on a Chip (SoC) that has five Reduced Instruction Set Coding Version 5 (RISC-V) cores and a big chunk of FPGA fabric built in. That means it combines the speed of RISC-V processors with the flexibility of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), a big pile of logic gates that can be reprogrammed.
The new BeagleV-Fire includes a sizeable chunk of FPGA to…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2023/11/04/beaglev-catches-fire/

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Ars Technica – YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown escalates, aggravating users

Nov 012023
 

Enlarge (credit: Google/YouTube)
YouTube has launched a global front against ad-blocking extensions, taking a small experiment it began in June full-scale.
As noticed by Android Authority on Monday morning, some YouTube users are now seeing a disruptive prompt when they try to watch videos while using a browser with an ad blocker. The prompt notes that “ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service” and urges users to either allow ads on YouTube or subscribe to YouTube Premium.
While I was able to still watch YouTube with an ad blocker, there’s recently been a noticeable increase in the number of users who report seeing the prompt. The Verge reported that sometimes those who see the prompt…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1980323

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LWN.net – Garrett: Why ACPI?

Nov 012023
 

Matthew Garrett explains
why ACPI exists and why it is not as bad a thing as some think.

There’s an alternative universe where we decided to teach the kernel about every piece of hardware it should run on. Fortunately (or, well, unfortunately) we’ve seen that in the ARM world. Most device-specific simply never reaches mainline, and most users are stuck running ancient kernels as a result. Imagine every x86 device vendor shipping their own kernel optimised for their hardware, and now imagine how well that works out given the quality of their firmware. Does that really seem better to you?

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/949625/

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Techdirt. – Just Because Certain Crimes Are Going Viral Doesn’t Mean Crime Rates Are Increasing

Oct 242023
 

Perception matters more than reality, especially when your budget is on the line.
Law enforcement agencies like to portray criminal activity as constantly rising, especially now that they’re facing additional scrutiny and the occasional so-called “defunding” effort. It’s a weird way to handle (government) business. On one hand, the cops claim rising crime necessitates more funding. On the other hand, an endlessly escalating crime rate tends to demonstrate cops aren’t an effective solution to the problem.
Portraying America as crime-ridden has worked out well for most law enforcement agencies. The tough questions are almost never asked by local legislators who tend to give cops whatever they want, rather than risk being perceived as “soft” on crime.
These efforts…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/24/just-because-certain-crimes-are-going-viral-doesnt-mean-crime-rates-are-increasing/

 2023-10-24  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Just Because Certain Crimes Are Going Viral Doesn’t Mean Crime Rates Are Increasing

The Register – Web Summit CEO’s comments on Israeli conflict ‘war crimes’ sparks boycott

Oct 222023
 

Intel, Siemens, Google, Meta, and Stripe among event walkouts

Meta and Stripe have joined Google, Intel, and Siemens in a growing boycott of next month’s Web Summit in Lisbon after the event’s chief executive compared Israel’s actions in response to attacks by Hamas as “war crimes.”…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/10/20/web_summit_cancelations_israel/

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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – The internet’s original sin

Oct 222023
 

My final Medium column.

Just as important as what a regulation says is who it applies to.
Take financial regulation. A great idea! American could use some. But — as the cryptocurrency world forcibly reminded us — it’s not always easy to figure out when someone is doing something “financial.”
So let’s come up with a test. Here’s one: “If a transaction involves a million dollars or more, financial regulations apply to it.” Not every million-dollar transaction is “financial” but there are few enough of these that filing the “worth a million bucks, but not financial” paperwork for them won’t be a huge deal. Besides, anyone moving a million dollars around can afford professional help in navigating the paperwork.
But…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/the-internets-original-sin/

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Biometric Update – Advocates say people think of biometric identification all wrong

Oct 202023
 

A digital rights organization says the popular view of biometric identification and surveillance is backward and the result is the commodification of people for government control and business profit. Access Now, which is particularly focused on the impact of AI on economically disadvantaged communities, has published a report with what it sees as unnecessary risks of biometrics-based tools. Instead of viewing the tools as mere collection systems, executives with Access Now see algorithms as programmed categorizers. They impose a desired order on what is by definition a spectrum of qualities, behaviors, reactions and identities. Biometric systems “are used to create baselines of what constitute ‘normal’ behaviors and bodies,’ ” according to the report. This “further…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202310/advocates-say-people-think-of-biometric-identification-all-wrong

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The Register – San Francisco mayor suggests police drones and CCTV can cure city’s crime woes

Oct 192023
 

Suggests bodycam footage should replace paperwork for simple arrests

San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, has proposed drone surveillance and cameras on public buildings to curb the city’s crime problems.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/10/19/san_francisco_police_drones/

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Ars Technica – What would signal life on another planet?

Oct 142023
 

Enlarge / Surveying the atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system, such as those in the TRAPPIST-1 system (artist’s concept of four of the system’s seven planets shown), could turn up interesting molecules that might indicate life. But ruling out false positives will be a challenge. (credit: ADAPTED FROM NASA / JPL-CALTECH / R. HURT, T. PYLE (IPAC))
In June, astronomers reported a disappointing discovery: The James Webb Space Telescope failed to find a thick atmosphere around the rocky planet TRAPPIST-1 C, an exoplanet in one of the most tantalizing planetary systems in the search for alien life.
The finding follows similar news regarding neighboring planet TRAPPIST-1 B, another planet in the TRAPPIST-1 system….

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1975686

 2023-10-14  Comments Off on Ars Technica – What would signal life on another planet?

Techdirt. – DHS Releases Previously-Withheld Report Detailing Agencies’ Abuse Of Location Data Purchased From Data Brokers

Oct 132023
 

This report [PDF], obtained by the newly-formed 404 Media, contains a lot of what we know, some of what we don’t know, and confirms a lot of suspicions.
The reliance on data brokers for cell location data very likely predates the Supreme Court’s 2018 Carpenter decision. But it’s safe to assume this market really took off following that decision. Prior to that, law enforcement needed, at best, a subpoena, to obtain a wealth of historical cell location data.
That decision erected some privacy protections for cell site location info. But the finding was limited to large quantities of historical data. And it had nothing to say at all about obtaining this information from third-parties-once-removed: i.e., data brokers collecting…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/12/dhs-releases-previously-withheld-report-detailing-agencies-abuse-of-location-data-purchased-from-data-brokers/

 2023-10-13  Comments Off on Techdirt. – DHS Releases Previously-Withheld Report Detailing Agencies’ Abuse Of Location Data Purchased From Data Brokers

Biometric Update – New York and Ohio introduce legislation requiring online age assurance

Oct 132023
 

New York Attorney General Letitia James, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, State Senator Andrew Gounardes, and Assemblymember Nily Rozic announced two new bills aimed at protecting minors online. The New York Child Data Protection Act will prohibit all online sites from collecting, using, sharing, or selling personal data of anyone under the age of 18 for advertising unless they receive informed consent or unless doing so is strictly necessary for the website. For minors under 13, this informed consent must come from a parent. How to determine the age of the person interacting with the website or platform is not specified, however. Options include collecting personal information for age verification, or performing age estimation based…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202310/new-york-and-ohio-introduce-legislation-requiring-online-age-assurance

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The Onion – Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas

Oct 132023
 

GAZA CITY, GAZA—The complicity of each and every Palestinian in the violent actions of their militant ruling authority was reportedly on full display Friday morning when dying Gazans received justified criticism for not using their last words to condemn Hamas. For example, instead of issuing a full-throated…

Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/dying-gazans-criticized-for-not-using-last-words-to-con-1850925657

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TorrentFreak – Pirate Sites Exploit ‘Interplanetary File System’ Gateways, Publishers Warn

Oct 132023
 

The InterPlanetary File System, more broadly known as IPFS, has been around for the past eight years.
While the name may sound otherworldly to the public at large, the peer-to-peer file storage network has a growing user base among the tech-savvy.
In short, IPFS is a decentralized network where users make files available to each other. The system makes websites censorship resistant and not vulnerable to regular hosting outages.
These advantages allow archivists, content creators, researchers, and many others to reliably distribute large volumes of data over the Internet. These same features also appeal to pirate sites, and several have actively started to embrace the technology to bypass censors.
Publishers Share IPFS Concerns
This week, IPFS was repeatedly mentioned by…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-sites-exploit-interplanetary-file-system-gateways-publishers-warn-231013/

 2023-10-13  Comments Off on TorrentFreak – Pirate Sites Exploit ‘Interplanetary File System’ Gateways, Publishers Warn

The Register – Mars helicopter to try for new speed record on Thursday

Oct 122023
 

57 flights past expected lifetime and still improving

NASA has scheduled the 62nd flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter and given it the job of achieving a new speed record for rotorcraft on Mars.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/mars_helicopter_speed_record_attempt/

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Planet PostgreSQL – Hans-Juergen Schoenig: pg_stat_io and PostgreSQL 16 performance

Oct 052023
 

Learn about pg_stat_io‘s debugging power: PostgreSQL 16 blesses users around the world with many features which ensure an even better user experience. One of those features is a system view called pg_stat_io. It offers deep insights into the I/O behavior of your PostgreSQL database server. From PostgreSQL 16 onward, it will make it far easier to debug and assess performance-related problems.
So, let us waste no time and dive into this wonderful feature.
pg_stat_io: Debugging I/O in PostgreSQL
The following listing shows us what the pg_stat_io view looks like:

blog=# \d pg_stat_io View “pg_catalog.pg_stat_io” Column | Type | Collation | Nullable | Default —————-+————————–+———–+———-+——— backend_type | text | | | object | text | | | context | text…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/6af

 2023-10-05  Comments Off on Planet PostgreSQL – Hans-Juergen Schoenig: pg_stat_io and PostgreSQL 16 performance

INDY Week – Durham Residents Prepare for “Stop Cop City” Weekend of Action

Oct 042023
 

It’s a cloudy Wednesday evening in Durham and around three dozen activists, community organizers, and concerned citizens are packed into a meeting room of the Main Library. A dry erase board is covered with assorted community announcements (National Lawyers Guild week of action, a labor protest in Charlotte, free markets in Durham and Carrboro). All eyes are on a screen’s black background and white capital letters, which reads “Block Cop City: November Weekend of Action”. Cop City refers to the years-long struggle in Atlanta over the planned construction of a $95 million police training facility on 85 acres of forest in the southeastern part of the city. The City of Atlanta first approved plans for the facility…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://indyweek.com/news/durham/durham-residents-prepare-for-stop-cop-city-weekend-of-action/

 2023-10-04  Comments Off on INDY Week – Durham Residents Prepare for “Stop Cop City” Weekend of Action

The Register – Amazon had secret algorithm to hike prices, claims FTC

Oct 042023
 

Project Nessie named in the antitrust suit, alleging Bezos’s bunch pulled in an extra billion-plus

A redacted portion of the US Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon last week has come to light, and with it more details of a secret pricing algorithm known as “Project Nessie” – which the FTC argued has “no valid and cognizable justification” other than an attempt to stifle competition. …

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/10/04/amazon_project_nessie_algorithm/

 2023-10-04  Comments Off on The Register – Amazon had secret algorithm to hike prices, claims FTC
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