Technology

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/1743099

.yaml, .toml, etc?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/3232301

Status & Download Links:

Download from source: release v1.2.4 (github.com)

• While Edge and Opera are awaiting approval, you can install v1.2.4 from here, or through the Chrome store

Hi everyone!

On the surface, this update brings a handful of features integrating the extension with other tools and services. We have the first of many features from the LemmyTools userscript, as well as the support for Alexandrite and Photon frontends. You can also directly search for communities through Lemmyverse.net and for posts through search-lemmy.com, among other small changes.

The biggest change was behind the scenes. I've completely refactored the code throughout the extension. Now that we have a clearer plan for the extension, I simplified all around, such as consolidating most functions to a central utils.js file. I also reworked the settings, and unfortunately this means you may have to add your home instance again. Moving forwards, it should be a lot easier to maintain the extension and for people to collaborate, which brings me to:

Want to help?

All new improvements with v1.2.4

Seems like the next logical step. Most big games are always-online Games as a Service where your local storage is useless if the company server doesn't handshake. A lot of business and productivity software already requires subscriptions and is partially online. Every single fucking company wants to have an app on your phone so they can watch you in the bathroom. And there's talk that MSFT might start moving Windows off the PC entirely and in to the cloud.

I figure at some point it's in the shareholder's best interests to prohibit users from actually storing anything locally. Storage is really just stolen subscription revenue, when you think about it. Every time a user accesses something on a local drive they're stealing the chance for you to extort them in to paying a subscription fee.

What do think, too distopian? Back when tapes, CDs, MiniDiscs, all the old generations of data storage that you could write to at home were first circulating the media industries tried real, real hard to make them illegal to privately own. We've been fighting an escalating battle against digital (and analog I guess) IP regimes ever since then. Streaming has pretty much killed physical media afaik. I have no idea if blu-rays or DVDs are still printed for sale.

Idk, just a thought. Let me know what you think.

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Source: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2023/08/10/prepare-your-firefox-desktop-extension-for-the-upcoming-android-release/

Archived version: https://archive.ph/x9dHq

Archived version: https://archive.ph/2Y3u6

It was difficult to maintain a poker face when the leader of a big US tech firm I was chatting to said there was a definite tipping point at which the firm would exit the UK.

I could see my own surprise mirrored on the faces of the other people in the room - many of whom worked there.

They hadn't heard this before either, one told me afterwards.

I can't tell you who it was but it's a brand you would probably recognise.

I've been doing this job for long enough to recognise a petulant tech ego when I meet one. From Big Tech, there's often big talk. But this felt different.

It reflected a sentiment I have been hearing quite loudly of late, from this lucrative and powerful US-based sector.

'Tipping point' Many of these companies are increasingly fed up.

Their "tipping point" is UK regulation - and it's coming at them thick and fast.

The Online Safety Bill is due to pass in the autumn. Aimed at protecting children, it lays down strict rules around policing social media content, with high financial penalties and prison time for individual tech execs if the firms fail to comply.

One clause that has proved particularly controversial is a proposal that encrypted messages, which includes those sent on WhatsApp, can be read and handed over to law enforcement by the platforms they are sent on, if there is deemed to be a national security or child protection risk.

The NSPCC children's charity has described encrypted messaging apps as the "front line" of where child abuse images are shared, but it is also seen as an essential security tool for activists, journalists and politicians.

Currently messaging apps like WhatsApp, Proton and Signal, which offer this encryption, cannot see the content of these messages themselves.

WhatsApp and Signal have both threatened to quit the UK market over this demand.

The Digital Markets Bill is also making its way through Parliament. It proposes that the UK's competition watchdog selects large companies like Amazon and Microsoft, gives them rules to comply with and sets punishments if they don't.

Several firms have told me they feel this gives an unprecedented amount of power to a single body.

Microsoft reacted furiously when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) chose to block its acquisition of the video game giant Activision Blizzard.

"There's a clear message here - the European Union is a more attractive place to start a business than the United Kingdom," raged chief executive Brad Smith. The CMA has since re-opened negotiations with Microsoft.

This is especially damning because the EU is also introducing strict rules in the same vein - but it is collectively a much larger and therefore more valuable market.

In the UK, proposed amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act, which included tech firms getting Home Office approval for new security features before worldwide release, incensed Apple so much that it threatened to remove Facetime and iMessage from the UK if they go through.

Clearly the UK cannot, and should not, be held to ransom by US tech giants. But the services they provide are widely used by millions of people. And rightly or wrongly, there is no UK-based alternative to those services.

Against this backdrop, we have a self-proclaimed pro-tech prime minister, Rishi Sunak. He is trying to entice the lucrative artificial intelligence sector - also largely US-based - to set up camp in the UK. A handful of them - Palantir, OpenAI and Anthropic - have agreed to open London headquarters.

But in California's Silicon Valley, some say that the goodwill is souring.

"There is growing irritation here about the UK and EU trying to rein in Big Tech... that's seen as less about ethical behaviour and more about jealousy and tying down foreign competition," says tech veteran Michael Malone.

British entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind, has chosen to locate his new company InflectionAI in California, rather than the UK.

It's a difficult line to tread. Big Tech hasn't exactly covered itself in glory with past behaviours - and lots of people feel regulation and accountability is long overdue.

Also, we shouldn't confuse "pro-innovation" with "pro-Big Tech" warns Professor Neil Lawrence, a Cambridge University academic who has previously acted as an advisor to the CMA.

"Pro-innovation regulation is about ensuring that there's space for smaller companies and start-ups to participate in emerging digital markets", he said.

Other experts are concerned that those writing the rules do not understand the rapidly-evolving technology they are trying to harness.

"There are some people in government who've got very deep [tech] knowledge, but just not enough of them," said economist Dame Diane Coyle.

"And so [all] this legislation has been going through Parliament in a manner that seems to technical experts, like some of my colleagues, not particularly well-informed, and putting at risk some of the services that people in this country value very highly."

If UK law-makers don't understand the tech, there are experts willing to advise.

But many of those feel ignored.

Professor Alan Woodward is a cyber-security expert at Surrey University whose has worked various posts at GCHQ, the UK's intelligence, security and cyber agency.

"So many of us have signed letters, given formal evidence to committees, directly offered to advise - either the government doesn't understand or doesn't want to listen," he said.

"Ignorance combined with arrogance is a dangerous mix."

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said that it had "worked hand-in-hand with industry and experts from around the world to develop changes to the tech sector", including during the development of the Online Safety Bill and the Digital Markets Bill.

No surprises here. Just like the lockdown on iPhone screen and part replacements, Macbooks suffer from the same Apple's anti-repair and anti-consumer bullshit. Battery glued, ssd soldered in and can't even swap parts with other official parts. 6000$ laptop and you don't even own it.

Based on Ubuntu. Interface and functionality like Windows, users will not feel much difference. BRICS countries committed to their own Linux distributions. South Africa has been the exception.

This article explains Malware with all the examples and the security practices to avoid them.

In this video, a Canon print cartridge is opened up and revealed not to contain the meagre 11.9 ml (0.4 fl oz) of ink it is advertised. The proposed solution is to buy a printer designed to be manually refilled with bottles of ink (such as the featured Epson EcoTank ET-2850), though it has only been tested briefly.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/ZGo6X

Universal Music Group (UMG.AS), Sony Music Entertainment (6758.T) and other record labels on Friday sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for copyright infringement over its streaming collection of digitized music from vintage records.

The labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.

They named 2,749 sound-recording copyrights that the Archive allegedly infringed. The labels said their damages in the case could be as high as $412 million.

Representatives for the Internet Archive did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint.

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive digitally archives websites, books, audio recordings and other materials. It compares itself to a library and says its mission is to "provide universal access to all knowledge."

The Internet Archive is already facing another federal lawsuit in Manhattan from leading book publishers who said its digital-book lending program launched in the pandemic violates their copyrights. A judge ruled for the publishers in March, in a decision that the Archive plans to appeal.

The Great 78 Project encourages donations of 78-rpm records -- the dominant record format from the early 1900s until the 1950s -- for the group to digitize to "ensure the survival of these cultural materials for future generations to study and enjoy." Its website says the collection includes more than 400,000 recordings.

The labels' lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings, including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" and Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)".

The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and "face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed."

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the former billionaire remanded after prosecutors pushed to have his bail revoked, citing violations that included Bankman-Fried’s admitted usage of VPN software that he said was to watch an NFL game and the judge’s view that he had attempted to tamper with witnesses “at least twice.”

They should just move to a jurisdiction that does not care for US thugs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230811044720/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/10/san-francisco-robotaxi-approved-waymo-cruise/

More than 40 companies have permits to test cars in San Francisco. At least 236 collisions since 2019 — most relatively minor.