Miscellaneous Tech News
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I have not seen anything yet.
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@dbeato said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
That'll probably be the death knell for Kafka. It'll encourage Amazon to fork it rather than sustain it.
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ALthough it looks like Kafka remains under the solid Apache license. Only ADD ONs are getting a weird license.
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Huawei Watch GT review: When hardware and software don’t mesh
Huawei's wearable OS could be great, but it doesn't fit this $230 smartwatch.
So what do the Huawei Watch GT and LiteOS have to offer? Essentially, the device is a simplified smartwatch that has all the hardware bells and whistles you'd expect from a a high-end Wear OS device or an Apple Watch—things like an AMOLED display, a continuous heart-rate monitor, an embedded GPS, and more. But in practice, its feature set and its real-world abilities don't exactly match its relatively high, $230 price tag.
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Microsoft Still Can't Fix Broken Surface Update
Microsoft is reportedly replacing more Surface Pro 4 units suffering from a display issue caused by a mid-2018 firmware update.
The issue was first reported in July 2018 when the Surface Pro 4 received a firmware update supposed to bring a series of improvements. What this update did, however, was cause display issues like unresponsive touch, with lots of users confirming in a discussion thread on the Microsoft Community forums that no workaround repaired it.
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Samsung Galaxy S10 Will Be Able To Charge Other Phones
Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S10 is likely to come with a reverse wireless charging feature that would technically enable the phone to charge other devices too.
Powershare would basically make it possible for the S10 to wireless charge other devices just like a typical Qi wireless charger. Similar capabilities already exist on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, and Samsung is expected to embrace the idea as well, especially as it’s trying to differentiate its products from Apple’s
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Massive scale of Russian election trolling revealed in draft Senate report
Data shows messages tuned to support Trump, discourage opposition.
A report prepared for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) due to be released later this week concludes that the activities of Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) leading up to and following the 2016 US presidential election were crafted to specifically help the Republican Party and Donald Trump. The activities encouraged those most likely to support Trump to get out to vote while actively trying to spread confusion and discourage voting among those most likely to oppose him. The report, based on research by Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika Inc., warns that social media platforms have become a "computational tool for social control, manipulated by canny political consultants, and available to politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike."
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How computers got shockingly good at recognizing images
A landmark 2012 paper transformed how software recognizes images.
Right now, I can open up Google Photos, type "beach," and see my photos from various beaches I've visited over the last decade. I never went through my photos and labeled them; instead, Google identifies beaches based on the contents of the photos themselves. This seemingly mundane feature is based on a technology called deep convolutional neural networks, which allows software to understand images in a sophisticated way that wasn't possible with prior techniques.
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CenturyLink blocked its customers’ Internet access in order to show an ad
Utah customers were booted offline until they acknowledged security software ad.
CenturyLink falsely claimed that it was required to do so by a Utah state law that says ISPs must notify customers "of the ability to block material harmful to minors." In fact, the new law requires only that ISPs notify customers of their filtering software options "in a conspicuous manner"; it does not say that the ISPs must disable Internet access until consumers acknowledge the notification. The law even says that ISPs may make the notification "with a consumer's bill," which shouldn't disable anyone's Internet access.
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
CenturyLink blocked its customers’ Internet access in order to show an ad
Utah customers were booted offline until they acknowledged security software ad.
CenturyLink falsely claimed that it was required to do so by a Utah state law that says ISPs must notify customers "of the ability to block material harmful to minors." In fact, the new law requires only that ISPs notify customers of their filtering software options "in a conspicuous manner"; it does not say that the ISPs must disable Internet access until consumers acknowledge the notification. The law even says that ISPs may make the notification "with a consumer's bill," which shouldn't disable anyone's Internet access.
Wow - it's like they actively sought out the most interrupting option available. The reality is, including it in the bill would be lucky if 25% saw and understood it, but doing this likely caused them a HUGE spike in support calls.
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@Dashrender but everyone saw it.
And technically speaking was there anything wrong with this approach? Forcing people to "read the ToC" more or less.
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@DustinB3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender but everyone saw it.
And technically speaking was there anything wrong with this approach? Forcing people to "read the ToC" more or less.
Of course, using the method they choose, everyone did see it - well, not really everyone, likely only the first person to try to get on the internet from a specific residence. So if a child was the first one, they could easily have dismissed it before the parents ever saw it.
And I'm with you - I don't really have a problem with this approach personally. Read the F'in screen - it SHOULD be beyond obvious what it is and how to get around it. Sadly, we are so inundated with popups and other crap that normal users just randomly click on things until they get what they want, never understanding what they are doing, just basically being Shakespeare's 1000 monkeys.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
being Shakespeare's 1000 monkeys.
I've never heard of that before.
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@DustinB3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
being Shakespeare's 1000 monkeys.
I've never heard of that before.
OK it was a horrible take on the phrase - give enough time to 1000 monkeys and they'll make the works of Shakespeare.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@DustinB3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
being Shakespeare's 1000 monkeys.
I've never heard of that before.
OK it was a horrible take on the phrase - give enough time to 1000 monkeys and they'll make the works of Shakespeare.
Oh I understood it as soon as I looked it up. But I've literally never heard of the infinite monkey theorem. It wasn't an issue with your description.