Non-IT News Thread
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Facebook chief's emails exposed by MPs
Damian Collins MP, the chair of the parliamentary committee involved, highlighted several "key issues" in an introductory note.
He wrote that:
- Facebook allowed some companies to maintain "full access" to users' friends data even after announcing changes to its platform in 2014/2015 to limit what developers' could see. "It is not clear that there was any user consent for this, nor how Facebook decided which companies should be whitelisted," Mr Collins wrote
- Facebook had been aware that an update to its Android app that let it collect records of users' calls and texts would be controversial. "To mitigate any bad PR, Facebook planned to make it as hard as possible for users to know that this was one of the underlying features," Mr Collins wrote
- Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat
- there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps caused them to fail
- there had been much discussion of the financial value of providing access to friends' data
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Tom Cruise finally takes a stand… on your parents’ terrible TV settings
The "soap opera effect" is a common default setting on most high-definition TVs.
Anyone who owns a high-definition TV has likely experienced the nagging sensation of something being not quite right when watching films. It's not all in your head. The effect is called video interpolation, or motion smoothing, and last night, Tom Cruise and writer/director Chris McQuarrie dropped a surprise PSA on Twitter (apparently filmed on the set of Mission Impossible: Fallout) to warn us about this evil.
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@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Verizon/AOL helped advertisers track kids online, must now pay $5M fine
AOL knowingly violated children's privacy law with billions of targeted ads.
Verizon-owned AOL helped advertisers track children online in order to serve targeted ads, in violation of a federal children's privacy law, and has agreed to pay a fine of $4.95 million, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced today.
"The Attorney General's Office found that AOL conducted billions of auctions for ad space on hundreds of websites the company knew were directed to children under the age of 13," Underwood's announcement said. "Through these auctions, AOL collected, used, and disclosed personal information from the websites' users in violation of COPPA [Children's Online Privacy Protection Act], enabling advertisers to track and serve targeted ads to young children."
pocket change - who cares. Make it 100M, then maybe, maybe Verizon will actually change something.
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@Dashrender said in Non-IT News Thread:
@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Verizon/AOL helped advertisers track kids online, must now pay $5M fine
AOL knowingly violated children's privacy law with billions of targeted ads.
Verizon-owned AOL helped advertisers track children online in order to serve targeted ads, in violation of a federal children's privacy law, and has agreed to pay a fine of $4.95 million, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced today.
"The Attorney General's Office found that AOL conducted billions of auctions for ad space on hundreds of websites the company knew were directed to children under the age of 13," Underwood's announcement said. "Through these auctions, AOL collected, used, and disclosed personal information from the websites' users in violation of COPPA [Children's Online Privacy Protection Act], enabling advertisers to track and serve targeted ads to young children."
pocket change - who cares. Make it 100M, then maybe, maybe Verizon will actually change something.
I think anything less than something that seriously hurts their pocketbooks is foolish. I'm thinking in the neighborhood of 20% of their net profit, or $250 million for each year that the COPPA was violated., minimum fine is 10% for one year, while freezing them from any rate hikes or increases until the fines are paid.
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Even self-driving leader Waymo is struggling to reach full autonomy
After 48 hours we haven't seen any sign people are using Waymo's service.
The Wednesday rollout of Waymo One, Waymo's commercial self-driving taxi service, falls far short of expectations the company itself set earlier in the year.
In late September, a Waymo spokeswoman told Ars by email that the Phoenix service would be fully driverless and open to members of the public—claims I reported in this article.
We now know that Waymo One won't be fully driverless; there will be a driver in the driver's seat. And Waymo One is open to the public in only the narrowest, most technical sense: initially it will only be available to early riders—the same people who have been participating in Waymo's test program for months.
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Why driving is hard—even for AIs
Despite promises of "soon," the infrastructure to support the driverless future isn't there yet.
I have a couple of kids of learner’s permit age, and it’s my fatherly duty to give them some driving tips so they won’t be a menace to themselves and to everyone else. So I’ve been analyzing the way I drive: How did I know that the other driver was going to turn left ahead of me? Why am I paying attention to the unleashed dog on the sidewalk but not the branches of the trees overhead? What subconscious cues tell me that a light is about to change to red or that the door of a parked car is about to open?
This exercise has given me a renewed appreciation for the terrible complexity of driving—and that’s just the stuff I know to think about. The car itself already takes care of a million details that make the car go, stop, and steer, and that process was complex enough when I was young and cars were essentially mechanical and electric. Now, cars have become rolling computers, with humans controlling (at most) speed, direction, and comfort.
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@JaredBusch said in Non-IT News Thread:
Forget batteries in my EV... I want batteries for my phone and watch that I don't have to charge them every day, lol.
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@JaredBusch said in Non-IT News Thread:
Lithium is one element that is good for making batteries, but it is not the only one. Flouride — the most electro-negative element in the periodic table — is also quite suitable for the task. In fact, fluoride batteries are capable of being 10 times more energy dense than lithium batteries. But until now, they needed to be heated to 150° Celsius (300° F for those living in former British colonies) in order to function.
A joint research team composed of engineers from Honda, NASA, and Caltech solved that problem by creating a new liquid electrolyte they call BTFE that lets fluoride dissolve at room temperature, according to Engadget. When used in a prototype battery composed of copper, lanthanum, and fluorine, the new battery was able to be discharged and recharged at room temperature. The prototype also has a “more favorable environmental footprint” than a lithium battery, according to Honda. No word on how well it performs in winter when the thermometer is well below “room temperature.”
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That's some awesome stuff. What a breakthrough that could be!
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
That's some awesome stuff. What a breakthrough that could be!
Yeah, it's definitely a large leap... but what about after that? Is 10x the current capacity of Lithium batteries the limit? What do we do then? Or will that suffice through ways of making things more energy efficient?
What ever happened to the micro-cells thing... where a super large capacity battery could charge in a second and last for a hella long time with a ton of output?
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
That's some awesome stuff. What a breakthrough that could be!
Especially if there's a big difference in weight between the Lithim batteries and the Flouride batteries.
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@dafyre said in Non-IT News Thread:
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
That's some awesome stuff. What a breakthrough that could be!
Especially if there's a big difference in weight between the Lithim batteries and the Flouride batteries.
Even if there is not - it's 10 times the capacity... that's HUGE! Assuming it's not 10 times the cost. or 10 times more likely to explode, etc, etc, etc.
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@Dashrender said in Non-IT News Thread:
@dafyre said in Non-IT News Thread:
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
That's some awesome stuff. What a breakthrough that could be!
Especially if there's a big difference in weight between the Lithim batteries and the Flouride batteries.
Even if there is not - it's 10 times the capacity... that's HUGE! Assuming it's not 10 times the cost. or 10 times more likely to explode, etc, etc, etc.
Currently, it eats the anodes.
For one thing, the anode and cathode of the prototype battery tend to dissolve completely in the electrolyte.
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@JaredBusch said in Non-IT News Thread:
@Dashrender said in Non-IT News Thread:
@dafyre said in Non-IT News Thread:
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
That's some awesome stuff. What a breakthrough that could be!
Especially if there's a big difference in weight between the Lithim batteries and the Flouride batteries.
Even if there is not - it's 10 times the capacity... that's HUGE! Assuming it's not 10 times the cost. or 10 times more likely to explode, etc, etc, etc.
Currently, it eats the anodes.
For one thing, the anode and cathode of the prototype battery tend to dissolve completely in the electrolyte.
Yeah I read that.
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Well it IS fluoride, haha.
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@Obsolesce said in Non-IT News Thread:
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
That's some awesome stuff. What a breakthrough that could be!
Yeah, it's definitely a large leap... but what about after that? Is 10x the current capacity of Lithium batteries the limit? What do we do then? Or will that suffice through ways of making things more energy efficient?
What ever happened to the micro-cells thing... where a super large capacity battery could charge in a second and last for a hella long time with a ton of output?
10x the current capacity... A Tesla Model 3 with the mid size battery pack goes coast to coast on one charge. A laptop works for 5 days without being plugged in. A smartphone would go for 2-3 weeks. What more do you really want?
Micro-cells? You mean the micro hydrogen generators? Those are generally too expensive for practical use, at least currently.
