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Comment Re: Why is casting a feature of the app not the OS (Score 1) 95

by evenmoreconfused (#65828807) Attached to: Netflix Kills Casting From Phones

Netflix casting doesnâ(TM)t actually do what many people here seem to think it does (forward the video stream to the target device).

What pressing the cast button does do is initiate streaming directly from the provider to the casted-to device (presumably using the credentials of the initiating device). The initiating device then becomes a kind of super-remote that has fancies like visual scrubbing and such. And the device is freed up for e.g. searching for something better to watch. Way better than a stupid TV remote.

Only it doesnâ(TM)t work anymore (on Netflix. Prime, Britbox, Crave etc still wok fine).

Comment Re: this is how I read this..... (Score 1) 97

by evenmoreconfused (#64906779) Attached to: Canada Predicts Hacking From India as Diplomatic Feud Escalates

Surely you mean the opposite, no?

You say âoeCanada told the USâ, but it will be the US that told Canada (since, unlike CSIS, the NSA actually has some teeth).

I expect this is why Trudeau canâ(TM)t reveal any hard evidence for any of it â" heâ(TM)s been given it by the US on the strict proviso that he doesnâ(TM)t publicly reveal details or the source (which might reveal their sources/spies).

Submission + - Disney says Disney+ TOS means man can't sue for wife's fatal allegic reaction 1

Submitted by beamdriver
beamdriver writes: As is being reported in Newsday , Disney has asked a Florida court to dismiss a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the husband of a Carle Place physician who suffered a fatal allergic reaction after eating at a Disney Springs restaurant.

The company cited legal language agreed to years earlier when Jeffrey Piccolo, widower of Kanokporn Tangsuan, 42, of Plainview, signed up for a one-month trial of the Disney+ streaming service that requires users to arbitrate all disputes with the company, records show.

Kanokporn Tangsuan, died in October after dining with her husband, Jeffrey Piccolo, at a restaurant in a section of the Walt Disney World Resort. Despite informing the waitstaff several times of her severe peanut and dairy allergies and receiving assurances that her meal would be allergen-free, she began having severe difficulty breathing shortly after dinner. She self-administered an epi-pen and was transported to a hospital, where she later died.

A medical examiner attributed her death to anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nuts in her system, according to the suit.

Submission + - Fair-use trumps digital locks in Canada (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Pig Hogger
Pig Hogger writes: (In Canadian law, “fair use” is called “fair dealing” — “usage équitable”)

Huge win for Canadian digital media users; long-time Canadian user rights champion Michael Geist writes:

The Federal Court has issued a landmark decision (Blacklock’s Reports v. Attorney General of Canada — PDF warning) on copyright’s anti-circumvention rules which concludes that digital locks should not trump fair dealing. Rather, the two must co-exist in harmony, leading to an interpretation that users can still rely on fair dealing even in cases involving those digital locks. The decision could have enormous implications for libraries, education, and users more broadly as it seeks to restore the copyright balance in the digital world. The decision also importantly concludes that merely requiring a password does not meet the standard needed to qualify for copyright rules involving technological protection measures. If this all sounds technical, this post provides the necessary background and then reviews the decision.

Ironically,

The case arises from years of litigation between Blacklock’s Reporter, a paywalled news service based in Ottawa, and the Canadian government. Blacklock’s had launched a series of lawsuits against various government departments, arguing that some of its articles were distributed within departments beyond the limits of its licences.

However,

“how the password was obtained is significant as this may prevent a user from invoking the fair dealing provisions of the Act.” In other words, not all password sharing will qualify as fair dealing.

So Netflix users are out of luck...

Submission + - Small Dongle Brings the HDD Clicking Back To SSDs In Retro PCs (hackaday.com) 1

Submitted by root_42
root_42 writes: Remember the clicking sounds of spinning hard disks? One “problem” with retro computing is that we replace those disks with Compact Flash, SD Cards or even SSDs. Those do not make any noises that you can hear under usual circumstances. Which is partly nice, because the computer becomes quieter, but also irritating because sometimes you can’t tell if the computer has crashed or is still working. This little device fixes that issue! It’s called the HDD clicker and it’s a very unique little gadget!

Submission + - SPAM: UK Universities Forced to End 7 Joint Ventures With Chinese Defense Companies

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Imperial College will shut down two major research centres sponsored by Chinese aerospace and defence companies amid a crackdown on academic collaborations with China, the Guardian has learned.

The Avic Centre for Structural Design and Manufacturing is a long-running partnership with China’s leading civilian and military aviation supplier, which has provided more than £6m to research cutting-edge aerospace materials. The second centre is run jointly with Biam, a subsidiary of another state-owned aerospace and defence company, which has contributed £4.5m for projects on high-performance batteries, jet engine components and impact-resistant aircraft windshields. The centres’ stated goals are to advance civilian aerospace technologies, but critics have repeatedly warned that the research could also advance China’s military ambitions.

Now Imperial has confirmed the two centres will be shut by the end of the year after the rejection of two licence applications to the government’s Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU), which oversees the sharing of sensitive research with international partners. The closures follow a warning in July by the heads of MI5 and the FBI of the espionage threat posed by China to UK universities, and highlight the government’s hardening attitude on the issue.

“You can say with a high degree of confidence that this decision has been taken because the government is of the view that continuing licensing would enable the military development in China, which is viewed as a threat to security,” said Sam Armstrong, director of communications at the Henry Jackson Society thinktank. “The government has made it clear to universities that there is an overall shift in the weather such that these collaborations are no longer possible.”
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:Canada... (Score 3, Interesting) 123

Everything runs on fossil fuels; public transport is crap. ... They have zero environmental credibility.

Please don't lump all Canada in with Alberta. Quebec has generated 99% + of its power from hydro for decades. And Montreal has won the "best bicycling city" in North America for years https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%2Fmo... .

Submission + - Linux x86/x86_64 Will Now Always Reserve The First 1MB Of RAM (phoronix.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: The Linux x86/x86_64 kernel code already had logic in place for reserving portions of the first 1MB of RAM to avoid the BIOS or kernel potentially clobbering that space among other reasons while now Linux 5.13 is doing away with that "wankery" and will just unconditionally always reserve the first 1MB of RAM.

The Linux kernel was already catering to Intel Sandy Bridge graphics accessing memory below the 1MB mark, the first 64K of memory are known to be corrupted by some BIOSes, and similar problems coming up in that low area of memory. But rather than dealing with all that logic and other possible niche cases besides the EGA/VGA frame-buffer and BIOS, the kernel is playing it safe and just always reserving the first 1MB of RAM so it will not get clobbered by the kernel.

Submission + - 2nd Year Physics Student Comes Up With Potential Quantum Error Correcting Code (abc.net.au) 1

Submitted by Tesseractic
Tesseractic writes: Sydney university student Pablo Bonilla, 21, had his first academic paper published overnight and it might just change the shape of computing forever.

As a second-year physics student at the University of Sydney, Mr Bonilla was given some coding exercises as extra homework and what he returned with has helped to solve one of the most common problems in quantum computing.

His code spiked the interest of researchers at Yale and Duke in the United States and the multi-billion-dollar tech giant Amazon plans to use it in the quantum computer it is trying to build for its cloud platform Amazon Web Services. ...

Assistant professor Shruti Puri of Yale's quantum research program said the new code solved a problem that had persisted for 20 years.

"What amazes me about this new code is its sheer elegance," she said.

"Its remarkable error-correcting properties are coming from a simple modification to a code that has been studied extensively for almost two decades." ...

Co-author of the paper, the University of Sydney's Ben Brown, said the brilliance of Pablo Bonilla's code was in its simplicity.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 2) 93

As a (long since retired) private pilot we were taught that the main issue is the relation between the center of mass and the center of lift. As long as the former is ahead of the latter, a stalled aircraft will fall nose down (and recover). If the reverse, it will fall tail first and be impossible to recover.

(The above only applies to straight-ahead flight, different effects occur in a flat spin).

Thus a small difference could, in some circumstances, have a serious effect.

Submission + - "Miss" causes serious incident on plane after passenger weight mis-calculated (theguardian.com) 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: A software mistake caused a Tui flight to take off heavier than expected as female passengers using the title “Miss” were classified as children, an investigation has found. The departure from Birmingham airport to Majorca with 187 passengers on board was described as a “serious incident” by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

An update to the airline’s reservation system while its planes were grounded due to the coronavirus pandemic led to 38 passengers on the flight being allocated a child’s “standard weight” of 35kg as opposed to the adult figure of 69kg. This caused the load sheet – produced for the captain to calculate what inputs are needed for take-off – to state that the Boeing 737 was more than 1,200kg lighter than it actually was. Investigators described the glitch as “a simple flaw” in an IT system. It was programmed in an unnamed foreign country where the title “Miss” is used for a child and “Ms” for an adult female.

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