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Google To Update Street View Images Across Dozens of Countries, Deleted Blog Post Says (theverge.com) 29

Google is getting ready to show off updated Street View imagery in nearly 80 countries. The Verge: In a now-removed blog post seen by The Verge, Google announced that the new images are coming to countries like Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Japan, the Philippines, Rwanda, Serbia, South Africa, and more. Google is also bringing Street View to a handful of countries where it's never been available, including Bosnia, Namibia, Lichtenstein, and Paraguay. The company said its more portable Street View camera, which launched in 2022, will help offer images of "even more places in the future."

Google Maps and Google Earth are getting sharper satellite imagery as well, thanks to the company's cloud-removal AI tool that takes out clouds, shadows, haze, and mist. This should result in "brighter, more vibrant" images, according to Google.

Comment Re:BS (Score 5, Insightful) 264

I sometimes think that only the Gen-X'ers really 'know' computers. You know, the ones that grew up during the birth of the home computer (70's and 80's). Older than that, and they never really ever got it. Younger than that, and it's all been too automated and abstracted away. It seems only the people who actually learned how computers work, because they had to to even use them, are the ones that really understand tech things.

Comment Broken window fallacy (Score 2) 169

Guess they got to keep breaking those windows so the repairman can have a job. That's basically what they're saying here. If people don't go to the office, they don't buy gas, they don't buy lunch at restaurants, etc. But we can't have that, so we keep doing the inefficient thing to prop up the businesses. Those businesses don't have a God-given right to profit. If a worker can work from home and save money, more power to them. Why do these businesses think they are entitled to get paid? If I (as an employee) can work from home and save money on transit, parking, eating out, etc, then you're damn right I'm going to do that, and pocket the money for myself. And help the environment to boot.

Comment Re:Microsoft is cheaper on this note (Score 4, Interesting) 53

Oracle sued when the contract was going to AWS, now AWS is suing when the contract is going to Microsoft, everyone will sue unless they get the contract. Even if they don't win, they will get concessions during future projects in order to not have a 3 year legal delay.

I was involved with an RFP for a project many years ago, and the candidates were IBM, Sun and SGI (so that gives you some idea of the timeframe). As soon as we awarded the contract to one of them, I had the other two tell me directly to my face that they would be suing. No reason given, and the way they so nonchalantly said it made me realize that this was just the normal way of business. Like dealing with children, if they don't get their way, it's an automatic complaint to the parents. So nothing surprises me anymore about these companies, and it really opened my eyes to how childish some of the exec's at these companies really are.

Facebook

A Facebook Bug Exposed Anonymous Admins of Pages (wired.com) 17

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Facebook Pages give public figures, businesses, and other entities a presence on Facebook that isn't tied to an individual profile. The accounts behind those pages are anonymous unless a Page owner opts to make the admins public. You can't see, for example, the names of the people who post to Facebook on WIRED's behalf. But a bug that was live from Thursday evening until Friday morning allowed anyone to easily reveal the accounts running a Page, essentially doxing anyone who posted to one. All software has flaws, and Facebook quickly pushed a fix for this one -- but not before word got around on message boards like 4chan, where people posted screenshots that doxed the accounts behind prominent pages. All it took to exploit the bug was opening a target page and checking the edit history of a post. Facebook mistakenly displayed the account or accounts that made edits to each post, rather than just the edits themselves.

Facebook says the bug was the result of a code update that it pushed Thursday evening. Facebook points out that no information beyond a name and public profile link were available, but that information isn't supposed to appear in the edit history at all. And for people, say, running anti-regime Pages under a repressive government, making even that much information public is plenty alarming.

Comment Re:Meanwhile... (Score 4, Insightful) 124

Meanwhile, my gas engine still gets 100% of the fuel efficiency it had when I bought it while EV fanbois are applauding 85% range.

So it gets 100% of the 25% max efficiency for a combustion engine? Not much to brag about. And pro-tip: you're not getting anywhere near 100% of new-vehicle efficiency after 7 years.

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