Is Google seriously just run by AI at this point? I imagine at some point up the middle management chain it’s just a layer of AI making decisions that no one has the authority to override.
Similar to how Amazon warehouse workers say that they’re working for an algorithm at this point making hiring/firing decisions.
Amazon runs on hire quickly and fire quickly policy (many other businesses have already copied this style of recruitment), which is why they are finding themselves running out of massive pools of workers.
I'm curious if single threaded* games/applications that were CPU limited when the P4 originally came out run better on the 13900k with the same code.
That was my impression from games at the time, that they were coded with an expectation that clock speeds would keep going up in the future. But they didn't and the games probably run just as bad now as they did before.
That's true for new installs at least. But Android won't let you install an update to an existing app with a different signing key, it'll error out with something generic.
As an explanation as to why Google has gone down this design path, I think this makes sense. Basically it’s easier to maintain compatibility with existing devices this way.
From a security perspective I don’t think it makes the slightest difference. Google controls the logic that prevents updating apps with a different signing key.
There are so many conceivable ways that Google could inject arbitrary code into each process (e.g. silently cause a different “shadow” app bundle to be launched, play with LD_LIBRARY_PATH, play with the Dalvik VM, modify Java/system libraries, etc) or read processes’ memory, that it’s safe to assume that if Google wants (or is forced to) to modify your app’s behaviour or exfiltrate sensitive data from your device then it’s absolutely within their power to do that.
People are concerned about Google editing code, which would be detectable through the signed code section or just basic decompilation and would be a nightmare for PR. But people are apparently not concerned with
1. Nothing has ever prevented tampering with the signature before first install.
2. Google owns and writes the OS.
3. Libraries like WebView are both security critical and updated via ordinary app updates, and are provided by Google.
4. The dex bytecode isn't actually run on modern devices. Instead it is compiled into an executable by code owned by... Google.
5. The large majority of developers are using compilers and other tooling provided by Google.
This is why the concern over this change is ludicrous. When you installed Signal or whatever for the first time did you check the signature? Did it bother you that it was technically possible for Play to substitute code? No. Because you are using an Android phone and trusting the OS developer is a requirement for everything.
And there isn't a "total lack of chances to stop tampering", since the code section can still be signed with a different key.
So why is everybody suddenly claiming a conspiracy here?
The main threat model is that google is influenced into editing a specific app or few for certain users or locations, not that the company is going to turn the entire OS into a backdoor. So most of your bullet points aren't very relevant. This threat model isn't a "conspiracy" either.
I'm starting to wonder if the random Google account lockouts are caused by account hacks, where the account proceeds to be used by spammers and other nefarious people. Has anyone here that has been randomly locked out of their Google account like this been using 2FA?
It still sucks that Google has no real appeal process for this.
Don't they host their own ads? Something I wish more websites would do instead of letting ad networks stomp all over the page with whatever Javascript/Flash/viruses they want.
It's not surprising that Facebook serves its own ads, considering that it's one of the top 2 digital ad networks by revenue in the US. Google does the same for its sites.
Facebook and Google have a duopoly on the online ad market, with a combined 60.9% market share. Amazon is #3 with just 7.6%.
On the other hand it's not as easy to adjust brightness on desktop monitors so I appreciate having the option either way.
Software brightness control on desktop monitors is something I've wanted for a while. Closest thing I've seen is a monitor with a built in light sensor that has the option of auto adjusting independent of the computer.
It has long been possible to adjust the brightness of monitors through software. The trouble is that laptop displays and external displays do it in two different ways, and the external monitor one is pretty much unknown and unused by normal software.
Taking my laptop as an example: Windows has two APIs for adjusting screen brightness, one of which only works for the internal display and one of which only works for external displays; and sadly the brightness keys on the laptop are uninterceptable and I have not come up with any way of linking the brightnesses either. I went hunting and settled on some old freeware called ScreenBright which I can invoke from the command line, so that now I just run `b 0` for night time and `b 40` for most of the day (and up to 70% in certain seasons—but 100% is pretty much always too bright where I use my external displays). Since I arranged that workflow, I have also written a tiny Rust program that interacts with the APIs directly which could replace it.
>and sadly the brightness keys on the laptop are uninterceptable
This doesn't seem to be true for most laptops. The ones I have used show a OS graphic when you turn the brightness down similar to the volume. Have tested this using linux on a dell xps and a macbook.
Unfortunately both still do not adjust the brightness of external monitors.
On my previous laptop I ran Arch Linux with i3, and handled the XF86Brightness keys myself. But at present I’m using Windows, and I haven’t found any means of intercepting the keys: Windows handles them in some way that prevents me from handling them myself.
Is this still not common? I have an Apple Cinema Display from 15 years ago and it has both hardware brightness controls (on the right edge), and software brightness control (keyboard f-keys, labeled as such on Apple keyboards).
It's been a very long time since I used a monitor with any sort of rotating dial.
The trend for decades now has been to have buttons only, and often there's a menu you have to navigate through in order to actually get to the brightness settings. It's a real hassle on many monitors.
As mentioned in many other comments, both here and in the link, sites don't need to modify your clipboard to exploit this behavior. They can insert invisible text inside the highlighted area when you select text, before you've even hit Copy, and this hidden text will be copied.
You won’t see anything like that with the naked eye, period. We can’t build up a composite of all photons our eye gathers over 1060 hours! There are places where you can get minimal light pollution and see amazing things though.
No, the best you can do unaided is just a general view of the Milky Way.
But if you're willing to accept some optical aids like a reflector and eye piece, a large amateur "light bucket" dobsonian telescope can unveil deep space objects to the naked eye.
I don't think it's possible to get anything like these photos though, the sensor is collecting light over a very long duration to present as a single image. The only way to get more light into your naked eye real-time is with more aperture, obviously there are practical limits there.
I've seen the Magellanic Clouds with my naked eye. I worked at an observatory in rural Argentina (location because light pollution). One night, I went out to one of the telescopes for emergency maintenance. When we got back out into the dark and hadn't turned on the headlamps of the car yet, the Milky Way stretched like a band across the sky, and you could see both Magellanic Clouds as
small but macroscopic objects, indeed looking like clouds.
This was among the most breathtaking things I've ever seen (the other being a particularly vivid showing of northern lights in Alaska). The southern hemisphere's sky is infinitely more exciting than the northern one.
Similar to how Amazon warehouse workers say that they’re working for an algorithm at this point making hiring/firing decisions.