Kaz

New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill ARSTECHNICA.COM Fresh off court victory, NY says low-income plans must be available Wednesday. I've heard that Elon didn't want to provide Starlink internet for that cheap, or that if he did it would be massively data capped. Will this be a situation where Starlink pulls out of New York? Something to keep an eye on.

But where is the RGB SPARKLE?! J/k, I'm happy to see more minimalist designs. If it were up to me, I'd still have a metal box for a PC case...

Texas Sues Allstate for Collecting Driver Data to Raise Premiums GIZMODO.COM The lawsuit accuses the insurance company of paying app developers to install code in their products that sent sensitive customer data back to... Wow, I never thought I'd see the day that insurance companies were held accountable! Too bad they will just use this lawsuit as an excuse to raise premiums... This does set an interesting precedent. Insurance companies have traditionally always changed their rates based on how safe they felt a diver was. This creates a line in the sand, but exactly where is that line? Is it the consumers vehicle? Cameras located at busy intersections? Speeding ticket cameras? What about tickets in general? These are things that will have to be discussed in the courts or it will just be business as usual with everything fair game. Maybe the initial complaint is about transparency and it will be fine as long as they tell everyone about it. (Here on page 523 of the user documentation, you can see...)

reuters.com WWW.REUTERS.COM This is cool because they managed to take over the command control server and send the command for the malware to self delete. Cybersecurity is in a real no man's land right now. Federal government says they can't fix the problem because they report problems and fixes, but nobody takes the time to fix it. Average Joes just can't compete with full time security specialists trying to compromise their systems. Between that and the ever growing list of old devices still running, it's only going to get worse!

FTC Says Refunds For Razer's False N95 Face Masks Are Going Out Now - GameSpot WWW.GAMESPOT.COM Over $1 million is on the way, split among thousands of people. I suspect our usual suspects weren't drawn to this product, but if you were, go get your refund now! It might not be a n95 mask, but it will make a great prop for cyberish cosplays, and it's free! I wonder how much this will cost Razer.

John Deere faces U.S. lawsuit over farmers' ability to repair tractors WWW.NPR.ORG The Federal Trade Commission and two states accuse Deere of costing farmers time and money by unfairly limiting software access and forcing the... Louis Rossman must be dancing right now, he's fought so hard to push right to repair. Obviously, it's a lawsuit that will take some time, and who knows what sneaky ways they will figure out to circumvent the exact language used to curtail their behaviour. Wouldn't it be great if you could just take your car to a mechanic when it needs to be fixed? Tractor owners think so!

The problem is that the system is designed for end users not to know. If you know, they screwed up. The only real way to check would be to have a seperate computer/VM, with a VPN and different account. It would also take conscious effort to move the mouse and interact with the computer differently. I've also seen amazon prices change on things, but I've no idea why. This reminds me of Walmart. They used to charge different prices for things depending on where it was in the store. There were 3 different prices for electrical tape, depending on if it was in automotive, electronics, or home improvement. None of them would be the same 'brand' and none of them would have the other brand anywhere within eyesight. Supposedly Walmart quit doing that, but it might have been because they didn't tell employees not to advertise it. I only knew about the different prices because an employee told me where I could find it, and that it was probably the cheapest at the home improvement section. I saw the same thing with wasp spray. Much cheaper in the general home cleaning isle, than it was in the outdoor section. People going to outdoor to get it are going to buy it regardless of the cost. People in the home cleaning isle will buy it as an afterthought. You are welcome. I'd like to see this site thriving!

FTC Surveillance Pricing Study Indicates Wide Range of Personal Data Used to Set Individualized Consumer Prices WWW.FTC.GOV The Federal Trade Commission’s initial findings from its surveillance pricing market study revealed that details like... Burried in the article is a link where the ftc would like people to comment on their experience with targetted pricing. Regulations.gov WWW.REGULATIONS.GOV I'm glad this is catching the spotlight and it sounds like they are looking for insider information. I think bank loans are the most entrenched entity doing this. It's certainly not a flat rate for everyone deal. I'm glad Lina Khan is starting to show some teeth. I just hope there's some bite to back it up. I'm afriad there won't be though. The report has anonimized the companies doing it because how they make their decisions is a 'trade secret'. If they aren't willing to name and shame, what possible outcomes can there be?

I'm probably not Nintendo's target audience because I can't help but ask, what are the specs?! Can it duelboot steamOS? That would make it a pretty awesome handheld, but it's more likely to be locked down than allow people to boot other OSes. I might be more inclined to wait for an emulator that can run off a deck or Asus/whatever other varient. PC master race! If I was buying a console for a family with kids, the switch would definitely be my first choice.

A big part that made OCN great was the news. Before it was purchased it was my go to site for tech news. After the purchase news wasn't really a focus. Now I am going elsewhere for news, but I think it's something that generates traffic and is worth talking about. I remember talking to a guy who ran an offensive cybersecurity company. Some of his more notable customers at the time were johnson and johnson and mcdonalds. I was talking about intel's hardware speculating and how that was a serious liability with spectre/meltdown and zombie attacks. He wasn't aware of the spectre/meltdown attacks. That's the kind of cool news we used to have.

The 4080 for $1200 didn't sell well, but it was priced that high because they wanted to sell 30 series stock. The big sales pitch is frame generation. Supposedly they are only redrawing the parts of the screen that change, which allows them to boost FPS. It feels more like an attempt to muddy the water and say they preform much better than the hardware does, but maybe the end results are that much better. $549 5070 feels like a travesty for 192 bit memory bus. This should be a $400 card, but I guess they are saving that for a 60 series where they skimp on ram even more. Everyone is selling AI specific hardware, but I've yet to see consumer AI needs. Is there an AI product that the general population is actually using? I don't need my operating system to understand what I'm thinking before I think it. If Microsoft cared about the end user experience they wouldn't make Windows 11 start menu suck with history turned off. It's a blank page. They intentionally make it crappy! AI is useful for analysing mass amounts of data. The only mass data that my computer has access to better than a server is my actions and movements. We continue to grab more and more user data without securing the existing info structure we have. How long until this Janga house falls down? Is all this really about lighting in a game? I'm reminded of a Marrowind quote. "Confucius says, he who owns glass house, dress in basement."

Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, clears way for app to shut down in U.S. as soon as Sunday WWW.CBSNEWS.COM The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a new law that would lead to a ban of the social media platform TikTok. This goes into law 1 day before Biden leaves office, it will be up to Trump's administration to enforce it. Trump likes TikTok. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's funny how having the same capabilities as Youtube is considered a national threat. Makes me wonder just how much Alphabet is in bed with the government. But hey, if you can't buy them, regulate them! Youtube's monopoly shall not be contested! China does use it like a weapon. They like to circulate really dump things to American citizens and Chinese citizens see stuff pushing them into math and science. I wish America spent more time and effort on education than we do.

All they have to do is lock it behind remote start or heated/cooled seats and cruise control. People will sign their life away. Makes me sad. I'd say that the subscription model for stuff people already own was worse, but that's not true. Subscription, while despicable, was at least a straightforward transaction. People don't realize how much their data is worth and how vulnerable it leaves them. I would love something that showed how much insurance premiums were increased as a result.

FTC Takes Action Against General Motors for Sharing Drivers’ Precise Location and Driving Behavior Data Without Consent WWW.FTC.GOV The Federal Trade Commission is taking action against General Motors (GM) and OnStar over allegations they collected, used, and sold drivers’ precise... GM won't be able to sell customer data for 5 years. Geolocation, driver behaviour and such were collected and sold to insurance companies. This judgement is a slap on the wrist. They are still collecting data, they are still going to sell it. They just have to wait 5 years so the AI companies are large enough they can afford to buy it. The data shouldn't exist and should be deleted, but they stopped short of that. GM and every other car company are still going to collect everything they can.

Welcome!

Meta is ending its fact-checking program in favor of a 'community notes' system similar to X's WWW.NBCNEWS.COM Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a series of major changes to the company's moderation policies and practices, saying the election felt like a... This happened at the same time they are introducing AI 'fake people'. Because if they don't like it, they need a way to spam hundreds of accounts saying why stuff is wrong, but this way nobody can get mad at them for censorship or 'disinformation' because it's the 'users' saying it. Meta is a dumpster fire. It's to bad I'll never be able to convince my mother and her friends that they should move to a different platform. It's almost like these social media platforms hold your friends hostage to keep you there.

Category: Policy ARSTECHNICA.COM Civilization & Sadly I don't think this case will have much of an impact if it's just a fine. If they actually demanded that google destroyed the data that would be something. As a user, I can say that youtube sucks with history turned off, and that is an intentional choice they made. I have my activity set to be deleted after a few months and every time that happens google spams my feed with a bunch of negativity. It's kind of like the facebook psychology test they did where they spammed some people with negative things and some with positive. I would wager that Google intentionally does this as negative reinforcement when people delete their history (which I question if they actually delete).

DOJ cleared to sell $6.5B in Bitcoin seized from Silk Road CRYPTOBRIEFING.COM DOJ receives court approval to proceed with the $6.5B Silk Road Bitcoin sale despite ownership objections and volatility concerns. I'd heard the idea floated that the US Government was going to invest in bitcoin and hold it for 30 years. If they did that, it would have been to release these funds and 'buy them' from themselves. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. A mass sell off will certainly hurt the market. I think part of why Bitcoin has been so successful is that seized currency hasn't been sold off.

reuters.com WWW.REUTERS.COM Been saying for a while, Riot's anti-cheat system is way to invasive. Seems the US government is concerned about the potential always on kernal level anti-cheat gives to China.

I'm happy to stay here. If this site is going to stick around, a new banner at the top might be nice to let people know it's still open for use.

A note about duel boot, Windows 10/11 has a fast boot option that doesn't correctly close out drives. This can cause Linux to load additional drives as read only, because it believes the drives may be failing due to the improper close out. Disabling fast boot in windows can be done with msconfig under boot options. Before I did this I also had problems with the windows clock going off after each time linux was loaded. After disabling the fast boot option, the clock never loses sync. I never timed it, but it didn't feel like windows loaded any slower with the fast boot option disabled.

There is a problem with Ubisoft games. After spending significant time with Farcry 3 and Wildlands, every other game is just more of the same. Their engine is dated and the AI is comically bad. Exploring the world can be fun and the story may be interesting, but the actual combat gameplay is so repetitive it's no longer fun or challenging. It also doesn't help when they re-use assets multiple times. In wildlands I'd encounter the same compound designs in multiple places, and the plot voice line for missions was identical at multiple points in the game. Getting the same voiceline for taking out 2 of the top baddies is a joke. Everything leads up to this, but it's just copy paste, they can't even be bothered to make it a good experience. In Farcry 4, there was a point where I come out of a cave and enemies are waiting. I simply retreated back around the bend and held that angle, all 5 enemies decided to chase me and put their head in exactly the same spot as they round the corner. That's the kind of stuff that would never happen IRL, but I've had the exact same thing happen in Ghost Recon. Ubisoft wants to make stealth viable, but anyone who understands the stealth mechanics has already beat the game, because it's just so easy to exploit. Ubisoft's AI is the same stuff we saw 15-20 years ago. The graphics have improved, but enemies are still as dumb as rocks. Modded Farcry 3 was more fun than Farcry 4, because the mod at least changed the AI and how encounters happened. In the mod, if I started a firefight other vehicles in the area would be radio'ed in and I'd quickly end up with enemies all around which made me be a lot more considerate about the fights I'd start. Siege is still one of the most innovative games of it's time, I'm just not a fan of their marketing.

I had a 7900xt, it's a very capable card. I think the 7900 gre is in a great spot and most people will enjoy it. Not as much fun to tinker with, ram seems to be capped at a certain point, but with performance like that, there's not as much motive to overclock. I'm of the opinion water blocking graphcis cards only makes sense for the top end cards on the market. The GPU blocks are relatively expensive and don't have good resell value. In most situations the money spent on a water block would have been better spent on a higher preforming chip. 2nd hand market could be worth it, depending on how cheap they want to sell the water block. If you can get a good deal on a water blocked GPU, it really comes down to how much time it takes to overclock and if you enjoy doing it.

That's a great demo for graphics improvements over the last 20 years. All game remakes still have boxy graphics. This one did a good job of not making it obvious.

I played the game a lot about a year after release and it was quite enjoyable. I bought Phantom Liberty, and have yet to bother finishing it. The 2.0 loot system is the most uninspired loot system I've seen in 20 years. The one minor improvement, it made fewer junk weapons that had to be disassembled, which means less time sorting through junk loot. Everything else was a downgrade. It took all the joy out of exploring and hoping to find something good, because nothing will be good at a low level, and higher level means I've bought everything anyway. Phantom Liberty bosses all favor gun based builds, netrunning is a joke against bosses. Between the un-inspired looting, and the forced play style, it went from being one of my favorite games to just meh.