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Comment What about Mac apps? (Score 1) 21

by fgodfrey (#65162437) Attached to: Apple Now Lets You Move Purchases Between Your 25 Years of Accounts

The support document talks about what happens to your iPad/iPhone apps but doesn't specifically say whether Mac apps come along as well. Some of the choices Apple made here seem odd, like replacing your Primary Account's payment method, Up Next queue and podcast data. I have an ancient Apple account that has some older Mac App Store purchases in it but for the last 10 years, I've been using my primary account. I hope I don't suddenly nuke, say, my Apple TV data since the secondary account has none.....

Submission + - China's Dystopian "New IP" Plan Shows Need for Renewed US Commitment to Internet (justsecurity.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “Huawei’s plans for 6G and beyond make U.S. concerns over 5G look paltry: Huawei is proposing a fundamental internet redesign, which it calls “New IP,” designed to build ‘intrinsic security’ into the web. Intrinsic security means that individuals must register to use the internet, and authorities can shut off an individual user’s internet access at any time. In short, Huawei is looking to integrate China’s ‘social credit,’ surveillance, and censorship regimes into the internet’s architecture.”

Submission + - SPAM: 99.992% of Fully Vaccinated People Have Dodged COVID, CDC Data Shows

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cases of COVID-19 are extremely rare among people who are fully vaccinated, according to a new data analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among more than 75 million fully vaccinated people in the US, just around 5,800 people reported a “breakthrough” infection, in which they became infected with the pandemic coronavirus despite being fully vaccinated. The numbers suggest that breakthroughs occur at the teeny rate of less than 0.008 percent of fully vaccinated people—and that over 99.992 percent of those vaccinated have not contracted a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The figures come from a nationwide database that the CDC set up to keep track of breakthrough infections and monitor for any concerning signs that the breakthroughs may be clustering by patient demographics, geographic location, time since vaccination, vaccine type, or vaccine lot number. The agency will also be keeping a close eye on any breakthrough infections that are caused by SARS-CoV-2 variants, some of which have been shown to knock back vaccine efficacy. [...] The extraordinary calculation that 99.992 percent of vaccinated people have not contracted the virus may reflect that they all simply have not been exposed to the virus since being vaccinated. Also, there are likely cases missed in reporting. Still, the data is a heartening sign.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Striking Charter Workers Build ISP Where 'Profits Are Returned To Users'

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Charter Communications employees who have been on strike since 2017 are building an Internet service provider in New York City called "People's Choice." "People's Choice Communications is an employee-owned social enterprise launched by members of IBEW Local #3 to bridge the digital divide and help our neighbors get connected to the Internet during the COVID-19 pandemic," the ISP's website says. "We are the workers who built a large part of New York City's Internet infrastructure in the first place. We built out [Charter] Spectrum's cable system, until in 2017, the company pushed us out on strike by taking away our healthcare, retirement, and other benefits. It's now the longest strike in US history."

So far, People's Choice says it has completed rooftop antenna installations at two schools in the Bronx and installed "hardline connections to wireless access points connecting 121 units" at housing for survivors of domestic violence who have disabilities. A Gizmodo article said the system is equipped to offer minimum speeds of 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, meeting a broadband standard that has been used by the Federal Communications Commission since 2015. "We have a big portion of most of the Bronx covered with our antenna," IBEW Local #3 steward Troy Walcott told Gizmodo. "Now we have to go building by building to let people know we're out there and start turning them on." "A few dozen Spectrum strikers have been actively involved in the installations, but Walcott expects that at least one hundred workers are waiting in the wings for the project to scale up," the Gizmodo article said.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: The Looming Software Kill-Switch Lurking In Aging PlayStation Hardware

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Unless something changes, an issue lurking in older PlayStations' internal timing systems threatens to eventually make every PS4 game and all downloaded PS3 games unplayable on current hardware. Right now, it's not a matter of if but when this problem will occur. [...] The root of the coming issue has to do with the CMOS battery inside every PS3 and PS4, which the systems use to keep track of the current time (even when they're unplugged). If that battery dies or is removed for any reason, it raises an internal flag in the system's firmware indicating the clock may be out of sync with reality. After that flag is raised, the system in question has to check in with PSN the next time it needs to confirm the correct time. On the PS3, this online check happens when you play a game downloaded from the PlayStation Store. On the PS4, this also happens when you try to play retail games installed from a disc. This check has to be performed at least once even if the CMOS battery is replaced with a fresh one so the system can reconfirm clock consistency.

Why does the PlayStation firmware care so much about having the correct time? On the PS3, the timer check is used to enforce any "time limits" that might have been placed on your digital purchase (as confirmed by the error message: "This content has a time limit. To perform this operation go to settings date and time settings set via internet"). That check seems to be required even for downloads that don't have any actual set expiration date, adding a de facto one-time online check-in requirement for systems after their internal batteries fail. On the PS4, though, the timing check is apparently intended to make sure PSN trophy data is registered accurately and to prevent players from pretending to get trophies earlier than they actually had. You'd think this check could be segregated from the ability to load the non-trophy portions of the game, but player testing has shown that this seems to be a requirement to get PS4 games to load at all.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Request FTC to enforce the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act (repair.org)

Submitted by Z00L00K
Z00L00K writes: It's time to speak out for your right to repair

U.S. PIRG, Repair.org and iFixit are calling on the FTC to take real action to protect your right to repair. Add your voice and tell the FTC that it’s time to act.

We’re asking the FTC to:
  • Enforce the law against companies who use illegal tying arrangements to force consumers to purchase connected repair services.
  • Enforce the law against companies who violate the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act by voiding warranties when a consumer fixes something themselves or uses third-party parts or repair services.
  • Enforce the law against companies who refuse to sell replacement parts, diagnostic and repair tools, or service information to independent repair providers.
  • Publish new guidance on unfair, deceptive, and abusive terms in end user license agreements (EULAs) that: restrict independent or self repair; restrict access to parts and software; prohibit the transfer of user licenses; that and that purport to void warranties for independent or self repair.
  • Issue new rules prohibiting exclusivity arrangements with suppliers, customers, and repair providers that exclude independent repair providers and suppress competition in the market for repair services.
  • Issue new rules prohibiting companies from deceiving customers by selling products which cannot be repaired without destroying the device or cannot be repaired outside of the company’s own service network, without disclosing that fact at the point of sale.

Comment Re:Go fuck yourself, SourceForge (Score 1) 323

by Omnifarious (#56722496) Attached to: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire Coding Site GitHub

Interesting. I was burned in a weird way by SourceForge's descent into evil. A friend who was managing my BTC for me (long story) was a victim of the PyWallet trojan and lost ~40BTC in April 2016. :-( I tried to get her to use the GitHub posted version of PyWallet, but she wasn't (at the time) familiar with how to download stuff from GitHub. :-(

I actually really despise Git as a tool. One really spectacular feature would be if all repositories that were either git or Mercurial could be transparently accessed by either. I have some significant commits in Mercurial, though I haven't worked on it in a very long time. I might be able to help. :-)

Comment Revision to way searches are done (Score 5, Insightful) 90

I think police should need a warrant to use facial recognition in many cases. I also feel that perhaps searches of electronic devices and online accounts need to strictly limit exactly what is searched for and disallow any evidence of any crimes not listed in the warrant from being used.

The 4th amendment is supposed to make it hard to prosecute certain kinds of crime. In my opinion, the police really have no business going after crime that isn't reported to them anyway, except for a few exceptions like murder.
Democrats

Donald Trump Is Sworn In As the 45th US President (reuters.com) 1560

Posted by msmash from the how's-your-day dept.
Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on Friday, succeeding Barack Obama and taking control of a divided country in a transition of power that he has declared will lead to "America First" policies at home and abroad. Reuters reports: As scattered protests erupted elsewhere in Washington, Trump raised his right hand and put his left on a Bible used by Abraham Lincoln and repeated a 35-word oath of office from the U.S. Constitution, with U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts presiding.

Comment Re:That came in at a pretty steep angle (Score 5, Interesting) 206

There are two reasons that I've seen.

Because the rocket is almost out of fuel, even burning only one engine at minimum throttle, the thrust to weight ratio is more than one (ie, the rocket would fly, not land). So, they can't hover, they have to hit the ship and shut the engine off at the exact moment that the velocity is zero (or very close to it). So, to help with that problem, they come in at an angle which helps consume at least some of the thrust in a direction that isn't upward.

The second reason is, as you say, to protect the landing platform. If they run out of fuel (or the engine fails or....), the stage just drops into the ocean rather than crashing into the barge at a very high speed. That said, based on their last several failed landing attempts, that barge can take quite a hit and stay in one piece....

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