In principle it makes sense to give various electrical things in your house a way to talk to each other. For example we have a PV system with a small battery, a boiler connected to the central oil heating with a supplemental electrical heating coil and a wallbox. Before any excess sun is pushed back into the grid, our house will first charge the battery, heat our water (saving oil) and ask the car if it would like to be topped up. Additionally there are several smart power meters to keep an eye on the grid and various parts of the house. In theory we could also tell our washing machine to prefer homemade electricity, though when we want our laundry done we want it done now, so that’s not going to happen.

These are all systems from different manufacturers and need a LAN connection to talk to each other, and in some cases get other parts to do certain things in order for the system to work.
In our case that network segment is isolated from the internet, though that requires some above-average skills and dedication. Most PV owners just want a nice app with lots of shiny diagrams and can’t be arsed to set up their own IT infrastructure. Most manufacturers want the dumbest possible devices connected to a cloud solution because a) it moves most things that could break (buggy software) from the customer’s premises to them (never mind what happens if/when their cloud breaks), b) it makes it very easy for their app to access all data, c) it gives them a copy of the data, and d) it lets them sell you subscriptions.

So in a nutshell, it’s the same problem as everywhere a computer is involved - until after something really bad has happened, security is just that annoying thing that doesn’t add any value but makes things more expensive and more complicated for everyone involved.

But are you shivering with aantici…

According to FlightStats and FlightRadar24, the original plane was a Boeing 777-206 from 2003, which has been replaced by a 777-300 from 2023. It’s en route now over the Atlantic.

So an issue caused by Boeing’s recent series of quality problems seems unlikely, unless there was a dodgy spare part involved.

This is actually a super smart move, from an evil genius point of view. The plaintiffs now have an interest in the company growing instead of shutting down.

Though I really hope some judge somewhere stops that deal.

What color is your function?

It’s a rant opinion piece about the caveats of mixing async and sync functions, and divides code into ‘red’ (async) and ‘blue’ (sync) functions to explain the various problems associated with it.

I really wish there were any even remotely credible way to disagree with that statement.

I offer you a third option: at least one Lidl in Croatia uses blinking tags for stuff they really want you to look at.

Sometime soon we’re gonna have to invent a spam filter for real life. Hey, maybe that’s the use case that the Vision guys at Apple have been looking for?

Seriously, health departments around the world should have offered a fourth Covid certificate during the pandemy - tested, vaccinated, recovered and “will irrevocably forego any right to treatment in a hospital in case of infection”. That way all the tinfoil hats couldn’t have spread their ‘dictatorship’ bullshit nearly as easily, because hey, all you have to do in order to be able to go to the pub is to absolve society of the risk of you catching an absolutely harmless and possibly even imaginary cold.
Let a few thousand of those fuckers die and at the same time keep the hospital beds free for those who need them through no fault of their own. Watch the survivors crap their pants and mumble something about science maybe not being so bad after all.

The problem is that some people consider stupidity to be a virtue. That’s their right (sadly), but they shouldn’t be able to make society suffer the consequences.

Well, I can confirm from personal experience (me and family) that tourists wanting to enter the US aren’t treated that much differently from criminals.

But then you’ve created dozens (or hundreds) of opportunities a day for someone to get your passcode by shoulder-surfing, which you probably wouldn’t even notice in many situations. I’d argue that unless someone forcibly borrowing your face or fingers to unlock your phone is a strong possibility, entering a passcode each time is less secure than using biometrics.
Especially since the passcode also protects various security settings.

What’s your favourite position then?

Postal 2. The game mechanics and open-world flexibility have aged amazingly well, it’s still very funny, and I love the way the game’s level of violence firmly depends on the player’s actions.
Plus the Postal Dude’s petition to make whiney congressmen play violent video games is needed more than ever.

On Android I miss Spaghetti & Marshmallows, where you had to build towers out of said materials. That was a wonderful game with great physics but sadly only runs on very old phones.

So far I’ve found most of what I’ve been looking for on www.exlibris.ch, though www.orellfuessli.ch seems quite nice as well. Normally it says in the details whether or not a particular book comes with DRM.

The DRM-free books are still digitally marked - Ex Libris will include your e-mail address in one of the first pages, and there are probably subtle differences in the text itself. I don’t mind that, though I blame the technology for the occasional annoying ‘typo’ in the book.

The chart below shows the ARS/USD exchange rate over the last five years.
The peso has been in steady decline for years, with the last big drop in December, about a week before the presidential election.

The exchange rate doesn’t tell the whole story of course, but neither does attacking Milei for dismantling Argentina’s social programs. The reason for Argentina’s ongoing problems is that the state has literally dozens (if not hundreds) of social programs that it simply cannot afford, along with regulations strangling otherwise healthy businesses. The Peronists have always ‘solved’ this problem by a) borrowing whatever they can (and then defaulting on the debt) and b) printing more money. This has unsurprisingly led to ever-increasing inflation and rampant poverty.\

The Peronist/Kirchnerist presidential candidate (Massa) planned to counter the threatening hyperinflation by printing more money for more subsidies to counter the effects of the inflation. Let that sink in for a moment.

The point is, Argentina’s current system of subsidies and handouts is not sustainable, and hasn’t been for decades. That’s not a political opinion but simple math: you cannot spend more than you earn forever.

How that problem can and should be solved is of course debatable. Milei is certainly far from an ideal president, but when you bash him, keep in mind what the alternative to him would have looked like… and maybe give him a chance to prove his critics wrong if he gets Argentina’s economy back on track, which would be something the faux-left Peronistas/Kirchnerites have failed to do for the better part of eight decades now.

(Source: xe.com)

I ue Epubor Ultimate because I never got Calibre’s de-DRM working on my machine. It’s drag&drop for Adobe Digital Editions and also works very well in the very rare cases that I want a book that’s only available on Amazon (though buying one of those still leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth).
A DRM-free copy of the original is still preferred though. There’s one online shop in Switzerland that has started selling more of these lately. Maybe that’s a good sign.

I should probably care about this way more than I do, but this is a fight I’ve largely given up. The ‘right’ thing to do would be to boycott all DRM-encumbered content, but that’s a fight that very few people outside of a comparatively small circle of tech idealists would even about, much less care… and boycotts have never worked for CDs, DVDs or even VHS tapes. The sad truth is that DRM does work as designed for the overwhelming majority of less tech-savvy consumers who either aren’t aware of or can’t be bothered to try alternatives.

The good news is that it’s relatively easy to remove the DRM from ebooks, especially compared to other types of media. As long as this remains possible with just a few additional mouse clicks, the status quo “works for me”. I’m all for paying the artist/author, I just don’t want the thing I’ve bought taken away from me as soon as the publisher decides to pull the plug on their DRM server.

And what I’ve noticed here in Switzerland, even though it’s non-representative and anecdotal evidence, is that more and more ebooks are sold DRM-free.

It’s as if iPhones were only able to make calls to other iPhones

Don’t give them ideas!

I suspect that’s a lie. From a technical point of view there are way easier and cheaper ways to detect potential customers. A simple LDR would probably do a better and more reliable job and cost hundreds of times less.

The spokesdroid also stated that the machines do not take pictures. Duh. It’s a camera, what else would it do. May they meant it doesn’t store images, but the statements made so far don’t exactly instill trust.

I say sue them into oblivion. Make an example out of them.

That was my first thought as well!
Though OP might prefer Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Especially with the fake “eye” it creates for you on the front of the device.

I can totally see a fringe use case for meetings etc. where you can look super attentive while daydreaming or sleeping.