Kaz

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.

Seems the DLC is no longer sold separately, but it can still be picked up by buying the ultimate version of the game. The game will be de-listed completely Dec 15'th 2024. Servers are expected to stay up, but the game will no longer be sold. It seems odd for a game to be de-listed so soon after release (October 2018). Forza 5 is the same engine, with the same handling physics, but the cars have been tuned a little more. The real difference? Revenue return, Microsoft makes more money when people buy 5 instead of 4.

Google's headquarters is in Canada. Does the U.S. have the authority to break them up? I always wondered how the CIA could get so big, they'd run away and declare their allegiance to Canada... Google is just too big for them not to be involved. Hold on, I better go make some tinfoil hats.

I have installed the latest microcode, and have yet to see another hard freeze, although there have been multiple instances where the system hangs for a second or two. Intel has approved my RMA. They initially offered replacement, with the options being cross shipping +$25 (along with a freeze of funds for the amount of the processor, which is refunded at a later date), or their slower process which they said takes roughly 2-3 weeks for me to receive a replacement processor. I asked about a refund and after 3 days they told me they needed another 3 days to have a meeting. After the meeting I was told a refund of $419.99 had been approved. I have no idea how they decided upon that amount, as it's cheaper than I paid for the processor, but more than the current market value. When I asked them, it took 3 days to receive a response that the amount was based upon fair market value of a product that is over a year old. Overall I feel the process has been drawn out longer than it needed to be, but it was relatively painless. I could get worked up that I spent $439.99 on the processor or $429.99 if the bundle promo is applied to the processor, but processors might be one of the few things I'd be happy to lease for $20 a year if it meant I always had a top tier processor. I have to say that asking for a refund was worth the extra week of waiting. Instead of $25 cross shipping charge, I now get a $30 refund and an upgrade to a 14700k, or a $70 refund and an exchange. I'm leaning towards a 14700K as a replacement, and I'm hoping that the issue has been resolved. AMD's most recent launch isn't all that tempting and I still have a Z790 motherboard.

This isn't about pressing 2 buttons in a macro sense, it's about stopping one input when another starts. Looks like they need a random delay to avoid getting kicked /s. If I were a razer dev, I'd be working on that right now. I don't know how a software developer addresses this, but I'm glad they are trying. Part of me thinks it's scummy for Razor to try and rig competitive gaming with their gear. Another part of me thinks this should have been a keyboard feature 15 years ago.

https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-7014.html

I'm glad this topic came up. I recently stumbled across UFD Tech. They do computer focused news. I thought some others might enjoy it too, but I didn't want to start a new topic about it. https://m.youtube.com/@UFDTech I like David Bombal. He's infosec focused, which I have an interest in. He tries to teach and give exposure to people / things that are available. He's how I learned about Py4E.com to learn python. He has a mix of hands on demonstrations, and interviews with people in the industry. https://m.youtube.com/@davidbombal For sheer entertainment value, Jack Rhysider's Dark Net Diaries are great. They are podcasts that are a bit long, but his journalism and chosen stories are excellent. I've listened to all of them (except the latest that I haven't gotten to yet.) https://m.youtube.com/@JackRhysider Other then that, I keep an eye on Google news and a couple other news sources. I've taken some online classes from a local community college like Redhat Network Admin, Security+ and Network+. I also paid for a course from David Bombal / Chris Greer (who seems to be an ex-NSA hacker) on wireshark. If money wasn't a concern to me I'd have a computer science degree, simply because I find it interesting.

Rumor has it Intel is getting hit with a class action lawsuit from share holders. The claim is that they lied and misled share holders about their production capabilities. I think sueing a company they own doesn't make sense, so I'm guessing most clients who signed on to the lawsuit have sold their shares.

Researchers discover potentially catastrophic exploit present in AMD chips for decades WWW.ENGADGET.COM Researchers discovered a potentially catastrophic vulnerability in AMD chips that has been there for decades. It’s called a ‘Sinkclose’ flaw. If you follow the links to IOactive, they give some references including an old talk by Christopher Domas, which in my opinion was revolutionary at the time. Domas proved that hardware companies were intentionally backdooring their CPUs. Surprise surprise, someone eventually found AMD's backdoor. Domas quit being vocal on the scene after he was hired by Intel. There is an upcoming talk at Defcon scheduled for tomorrow (August 10th, 2024).

Supposedly with PBO unlocked and a bit of tweaking, these processors are really nice. 9700X is preforming about the same as 7900X. Same performance from 8 cores as they were getting out of 12. Is it a good idea to pump that much power into them? Who knows... If it's the same architecture as the previous generation, it stands to reason it can run at previous gen temps/voltage.

Moore's Law is Dead is well known for accurate leaks. He's very connected in the industry. The video is long, but is indexed for easy topic browsing. He speculates that Intel is in even more trouble. Their next major milestone isn't working out. AMD is posed to reap the rewards.

I hadn't thought about the AI aspect of it. By that reasoning, the writing is on the wall for google's business model. Makes me wonder what their business model will switch to. Obviously data brokering, but to what end?

Funny that they FINALLY address this, about a year after everyone has started commenting on google searches going to *. They've figured out they make more ad revenue if people can't find exactly what they want on the first line. Their searches aren't that great in comparison to other search engines, but the fact that everyone uses them means that every business needs to cater to them. Google seems to favor websites that have some form of analytic like gstatic. Businesses are forced to play their game or be left behind. I think Alphabet ought to be broken up, kind of like ma bell was. There's a few other companies that also fall into that category, but I really doubt anything other than a fine will come out of this.

Thanks for the offer, unfortunately even if the chip can preform on a different motherboard it doesn't help my situation. I'm using an ASRock Z790 Steel Legend, it only had a 1 year warranty. It also has the option to enforce Intel power settings, which I have stuck with since purchasing this processor back in Dec 2022. Because I've been conservative with my power settings, it makes me wonder if this is an oxidation issue. I haven't heard of anyone else having issues with C-State power settings. If partners are unable to support Intel processors, something is wrong.