TECHNOLOGY: What does the “public” get for its copyright?

Saturday, August 5, 2023

https://bleedingfool.com/news/disney-is-no-longer-releasing-physical-media-in-certain-countries/

Disney to Cease Releasing Physical Media in Certain Countries
Chris Braly  — July 28, 2023

*** begin quote ***

The problem with this shift, is that it allows media companies offering digital versions the ability to make edits and changes to the original material, sometimes subtly, sometimes, clumsily, and sometimes stealthily. Disney also happens to be one of the most egregious offenders of this, editing everything from Daryll Hannah’s bum in Splash, to removing dialogue from Academy Award winner The French Connection.

*** end quote ***

It seems that once again “We, The Sheeple” are getting the shaft.

“We” extend copyrights to content creators to encourage making content available.

BUT, (and there is always a BIG butt), “We, The Sheeple” don’t get access to the content we are protecting.

Reasonable people may disagree but taking “copyrighted content” back in a vault is not in the spirit of copyright law.

As with most little L libertarians, copyrights and intellectual property is on shaky ground to start with and now should definitely be revisited.

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HARDWARE: NO folding phones for me

Thursday, June 29, 2023

https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/06/rip-to-my-pixel-fold-dead-after-four-days/#p3

Sorry — RIP to my Pixel Fold: Dead after four days

  • The closed display halves almost touch, and that can smash debris into the screen.

Ron Amadeo – 6/26/2023, 1:00 PM

*** begin quote ***

Manufacturers keep wanting to brush off the significant durability issues of flexible OLED displays, thinking that if they just shove the devices onto the market, everything will work out. That hasn’t been the case, though, and any time you see a foldable phone for sale, you don’t have to look far to see reports of dead displays. I’m sure we’ll see several reports of broken Pixel Folds once the unit hits the general public. Corning may save us with an exterior foldable glass cover, but until then, buying any foldable feels like a gamble.

The scary part for Google customers is that a broken Pixel Fold means dealing with the company’s notoriously unhelpful support team. Horror stories are a regular occurrence on the /r/GooglePixel subreddit, where users have called Google Support “hilariously incompetent” and a “nightmare” to deal with, begging the company to improve. It’s one thing to ship normal glass smartphones, but these fragile foldables will put more stress on Google’s support network.

*** end quote ***

I’ve always been suspect of “foldable” phones.  Not the old ones but the new ones that promise a “big” screen from a “small” footprint.

Just ain’t going to happen IRL of rough and tumble.

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TECHNOLOGY: Give a smartphone too young and you can hurt the youngster?

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

https://www.ft.com/content/da7bd5c6-1d29-4c40-8578-05966b84346b

FT Magazine Mental health

A decade on, I still wonder if I was wrong to give my daughters a smartphone

  • New research links young people’s worsening mental health to the age they received their first phone

Gillian Tett 

*** begin quote ***

Either way, Haidt thinks there is “a classic collective action problem” making it difficult for parents or schools to impose controls or limits on phone use without “centralised norms”. He thinks, say, that schools should ask kids to leave phones in lockers while in class, but knows that parents might object since they worry they cannot “reach their child if something happens, like a school shooting”.  There are small signs of hope. In Texas, a “Wait Until 8th” grade movement has emerged, with more than 45,000 families signing up. And norms do shift, though as the history of tobacco shows, it took decades even with hard evidence of the damage done by cigarettes.  If you have young children, brace yourself for the battle ahead. If only some genius entrepreneur would invent a dumb cell phone that would appeal to kids but without the addictive lure of the internet. That would be real tech innovation. 

*** end quote ***

This reinforces some concerns that my significant other has for her grandson.  It is addictive.  And, she does limit “screen time”.   I wonder how this all works out in the end.  Seeing other children in restaurants locked into tablets, I can understand her concerns.  I used to think “what harm can it do”; I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid.  Maybe it warped me?

YMMV FWIW

Very provoking article.

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TECHNOLOGY: TL;DR Parking machine gives me the wrong change — in its favor of course

Thursday, April 13, 2023

PERSONAL GRIPE 

Visit a patient in Saint Peter’s University Hospital. Their parking machine cheated me out of 5$ in my change. 

Had to wait for parking supervisor. 20 minutes.  Argh!   (Seems like it happens a lot from what the fellow said.)

My fault for not giving it eight quarters. Argh!

Just infuriates me. Technology is just supposed to work and make our lives easier. Instead it gave me a 15 minute child-like style time out. Argh! Argh!

The Universe was telling me to relax?

# – # – # – # – # 

P.S.: Hey Hospital, have you heard that masks don’t work?  https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can-wearing-a-mask-make-you-sick/ They actually can give you some problems!

Argh!

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TECHNOLOGY: Sometimes too much technology is just wasteful overkill

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

https://www.thegreenhead.com/2023/03/tineco-toasty-one-smart-toaster-with-touchscreen.php

Tineco Toasty One Smart Toaster with Touchscreen
Appliances | March 28, 2023

*** begin quote ***

This cool new Tineco Toasty One Smart Toaster is a futuristic smart toaster with a touchscreen that allows you to customize the toasting process of two different slices of bread at the same time for personalized perfection. It features a large four inch touchscreen on the side for choosing shade, crispiness, and toasting modes (smart, fresh, reheat, and frozen) for each slot in the toaster, automatically lowers and raises the bread, has an IntelliHeat algorithm that detects the state of the toast and automatically adjusts heating performance, displays a fun visual progress indicator, alerts you when it’s time to empty the crumb tray (when’s the last time you remembered to do that?), has 8 custom preference save options, and has sturdy stainless steel constructed wrapped in an elegant ivory-white porcelain finish that just looks super cool on the countertop. Best of all, after engaging with all of this modern, state-of-the-art toasting technology, in the end you get toast that is golden and crispy on the outside, light and airy on the inside, and toasted just the way you like it, every single time. 

*** end quote ***

What no app to allow you to easily program your toast?

I admire that technology has to try stuff but how a 250$ toaster ever got green lighted is quite beyond me.

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TECHNOLOGY: Important New Year’s breakthru in important foodstuff by Iran

Sunday, January 1, 2023

Some day soon we might be making popcorn with infrared poppers (3 minute read)

Scientists from Iran have figured out how to make popcorn with infrared cooking. Popcorn pops when it is heated above 180 degrees Celsius due to trapped water within the kernel’s endosperm. When it is heated, the pressure from the superheated steam ruptures the kernel, and the starch within is released in a foam. The Iranian team found that heating up kernels using 700 W IR power at a distance of 10 cm produced the highest yield and highest rated popcorn.

# – # – # – # – # 

Hey I’d prefer they work on this rather than atomic bombs!

HNY

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TECHNOLOGY: Micropayments using bitcoin might solve the problem of revenue sharing

Sunday, December 18, 2022

https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/zgytrl/left_murder_scene_because_my_manager_complained/

Left murder scene because my manager complained about overtime
r/MaliciousCompliance
•Posted by u/Longjumping_Bad9555
6 hours ago

*** begin quote ***

In a past work life I worked at a small newspaper where corporate insisted on paying me hourly, despite the job not being capable of being done in 40 hours.

*** and ***

fishter_uk
4 hr. ago

This was several years ago, that newspaper no longer exists.

DreamOfTheEndlessSky
Avid Voter ·
4 hr. ago

Less funny when you consider how many newspapers have disappeared.

BigRiverHome
Monthly Top 5% Karma+2 ·
2 hr. ago

Funny what happens when you keep decreasing the value of your product.

I used to get the paper and I truly enjoyed reading it every morning. But, it kept getting smaller and smaller, and eventually it was bought out by Gannett, the people behind USA Today. That was pretty much it for me, it just became another version of the USA Today with a thin veneer of local news.

*** end quote ***

# – # – # – # – #

I’m a retired IT guy. I personally have always been surprised that “newspapers” didn’t figure out and implement a micropayment system.

Imagine if you were asked for 0.0001 of something (i.e., a dollar; a bitcoin; a ruble; a yen) for an article. Not some number of dollars for a year, or month, or such.

When you get on internet scale, it’s not hard to imagine getting 50k readers each paying say a penny for an article. That translates to 500$ for that one article.

The current payment technology doesn’t pay to scale that price point.

But now, a paper could collect a fraction of a bitcoin from someone’s public key and encrypt the article so that only the person’s private key could decrypt it. At that level, it wouldn’t be worth pirating it or sharing you private key to deprive the sender of the revenue.

I think that would be the way to save the “local” paper with digital distribution of content.

FWIW YMMV

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TECHNOLOGY: Wyze or Eufy Cameras should be disconnected NOW!

Friday, December 9, 2022

https://www.reviewgeek.com/138235/why-review-geek-cant-recommend-wyze-or-eufy-cameras-anymore/

Why Review Geek Can’t Recommend Wyze or eufy Cameras Anymore
Josh Hendrickson @canterrain
Dec 2, 2022, 1:24 pm EST | 8 min read

*** begin quote ***

But that’s not the same thing as recommending them to anyone else. No recommendation should start with, “this is a good option, but first, you should know some things.” And that would be a requirement. The only safe bet you can take is to not place security cameras in your home at all.

*** end quote ***

Wyze or Eufy Cameras should be disconnected NOW!

After you review the article, you may decide it’s worth the risk.

But I wouldn’t advise it, UNLESS you’re very confident in your risk / reward decision.

IMHO neither company has earned any trust.

In full disclosure, I don’t have ANY cameras operational or otherwise.

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TECHNOLOGY: You Don’t Own Digital Content! — That’s not fair

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

https://www.reviewgeek.com/137285/you-should-still-buy-blu-rays-and-dvds-heres-why/

You Should Still Buy Blu-Rays and DVDs, Here’s Why
Danny Chadwick @jdannychadwick
Nov 23, 2022, 10:18 am EST

*** begin quote ***

You Don’t Own Digital Content, Even if You “Buy” It

The digital movies you buy on VUDU, iTunes, or Amazon are subject to the same nonsense as streaming media. When you buy a digital copy of a movie, you don’t really own it. You’ve simply purchased a license to play a movie or show through a platform, whether it be Amazon, Apple, Google, or whoever. And if those platforms ever lose the right to provide the titles you’ve bought, they’ll disappear from your library. Maybe you’ll be notified, maybe not.

It may seem unbelievable for such prominent companies to lose distribution rights, but it happens. And in the coming years, it could happen more. Amazon can’t come into your home and snatch your copy of The Dark Knight from your shelf because they had a licensing dispute with Warner Brothers.

*** end quote ***

Much like “not your key; not your coin, so to you don’t own “digital content”.

I have a ton of self-help cassette tapes (I still need a lot of help), that the publisher would be happy to sell me another copy on a CD.  But I already paid for a copy.  But it’s NOT “mine”. Argh!

My SO feels the same way about “her” music on iTunes.  (I still haven’t figured out how to recover her account.)

Seems like NFTs could be a “solution” to this problem.  I buy an NFT of a book and I get to treat it as mine … FOREVER.

Argh!

—30—

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TECHNOLOGY: Building a community ISP — Comcast and AT&T should be concerned

Friday, October 21, 2022

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/comcast-wanted-210000-for-internet-so-this-man-helped-expand-a-co-op-fiber-isp/#p3

Building a community ISP —
Comcast wanted $210,000 for Internet—so this man helped expand a co-op fiber ISP
Fed up with Comcast and AT&T, Silicon Valley residents started their own network.
Jon Brodkin – 10/17/2022, 8:48 AM

*** begin quote ***

Sasha Zbrozek lives in Los Altos Hills, California, which he describes as “a wealthy Silicon Valley town,” in a house about five miles from Google’s headquarters. But after moving in December 2019, Zbrozek says he learned that Comcast never wired his house—despite previously telling him it could offer Internet service at the address.

Today, Zbrozek is on the board of a co-op ISP called Los Altos Hills Community Fiber (LAHCF), which provides multi-gigabit fiber Internet to dozens of homes and has a plan to serve hundreds more. Town residents were able to form the ISP with the help of Next Level Networks, which isn’t a traditional consumer broadband provider but a company that builds and manages networks for local groups.

Zbrozek’s experience with Comcast led to him getting involved with LAHCF and organizing an expansion that brought 10Gbps symmetrical fiber to his house and others on nearby roads. Zbrozek described his experience to Ars in a phone interview and in emails.

*** end quote ***

Remember that cable tv started as a community effort to get better TV reception.  Perhaps this is a way to escape cable companies and their contracts and high prices.  

Now with these folks it wasn’t about money.  For us poor folks, that’s too much of a capital expense. 

I wonder about the possibilities.

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