Exactly this. At my old employer we (the sysadmins/operational DBAs) were pushing for newer, supported versions of Postgres. The push back was always the regression testing cycle, amount of desired change and willingness of the product owner to even engage. The testing cycle was so long that I tried to convince them to test on Postgres beta, because it would well and truly be prod with a few bugfix releases by the time testing was completed (alas, they went with n-1 release of Postgres instead).
I've recently discovered systemd-nspawn which is an alternative to LXC, builtin and integrated into systemd. Much lighter than full VMs and it's quite similar to Solaris Zones and FreeBSD jails. One way to use it is to extract an OCI (Docker) image to a path, that way you can reuse the container tooling provided by Docker, Podman et al.
I've barely touched the BSDs and it's been a few years since I last used Solaris so I can't make much of a comparison as a user myself.
Some people recommend avoiding citrus and onions in compost and worm farms typically because worms don't like it in the early stages of decomposition.
I've never followed that rule personally and my compost system works really well. I get some black soldier fly larvae and other vermiculture in the early stages. In case you're wondering the black soldier flies aren't annoying like houseflies and typically steer clear of homes and humans. I usually only see a few BSFs around the compost and sometimes a lot of larvae, but it's seasonal.
Not to mention cherry-picking facts (at best). Case in point, cars today are more environmentally friendly than the 1980s, we are told. So much so that a car driving down the motorway today is greener than a parked car in the 80s.
Even over the past two decades the global annual car production has increased by over 50%, increasing embedded (production), direct (tailpipe) and indirect (electric) emissions because few countries are free from fossil fuels. Cars create noise pollution, air pollution through tyre particulates and poor land use practices that lead to urban sprawl and further car dependence.
Fortunately there is a lot of work being done in this space on many fronts, most notably around making public transport fast, efficient, comfortable and convenient, which reduces the need for cars. In the IT space there is tons of waste in short lived, locked down devices that people regularly replace because it's too hard; government action is needed (and in some cases has been implemented, like forcing Apple to support USB C cables).
I'm neither here nor there on nuclear power plants, but are actually insanely expensive. Just look at France which will spend over $US10b per replacement power plant, in a country with well established nuclear capabilities.
The idea that "climate activists" are wrong and pro-nuclear optimists are right is just a real weird take.
> Clearly these users opted in when they signed up for Facebook and then uploaded their photos.
Not correct. For instance I, an Australian, had an old Facebook account that I forgot about. I never agreed to any new conditions. In June I received an email from Facebook notifying me that they would be updating their ToS and begin processing public posts and photos. I have been trying to delete the account since but Facebook is refusing to without reason. The account appears to be locked and unrecoverable.
> They had an option not to use Facebook.
That's nice, and I can appreciate this point to some degree, but people can and do change their minds. It's very American style viewpoint that contract law trumps all, e.g. arbitration clauses which aren't really a thing around the rest of the world. Privacy and consumer laws can and should trump Meta's sneaky invasion of privacy.
> It's very American style viewpoint that contract law trumps all, e.g. arbitration clauses which aren't really a thing around the rest of the world.
If you don't like that viewpoint then maybe you shouldn't entrust your private data to an American company that can alter the deal, and you should just pray that they don't alter it further.
I'm Israeli, inherently distrustful of those who come to harm me with a smile. So I don't use Facebook. But I'm not a fanatic - here I am on HN.
You are correct. I just wanted to add that regardless how the US company alters their ToS, they are still obliged to follow the law of the land where they offer service. Which is why they get all the time legal troubles in the EU. But yeah. once your photos were already processed it's a bit late to sue.
> If you don't like that viewpoint then maybe you shouldn't entrust your private data to an American company that can alter the deal, and you should just pray that they don't alter it further.
I don't use Facebook, and I think my government should regulate and fine Big Tech companies like Meta when they breach users' privacy.
Countries can enforce laws on American companies. See: X and Starlink in Brazil. You can pursue companies economically, you can use technical countermeasures preventing them from operating in your jurisdiction, and you can use the legal system if their owners, directors, or employees enter any jurisdiction your reach extends to.
That's all very much for this specific scenario, but the tools exist to enforce laws, if the laws exist. Being a fanatic is not a requirement for any idea in this comment.
Not only that, they are the advertising industry, or at least a major player. Moves like Manifest V3, continuing 3P cookies and user-hostile moves on YouTube are all a part of that.
Chrome should really not be a part of Google IMO. It's a significant conflict of interest.
In spite of Manifest V3 being a shit show, I continue to see all manners of evidence that Google wants genuine honest reform for user privacy. The attitude & negativity is at severely problematic levels, and Google actually gets that improvement & reform is necessary to keep going for another decade without some kind of boil over/explosion.
I agree that Chrome in theory shouldnt be a part of Google. But generally I think there is incredibly little self-dealing, that some ideas do go wrong but usually there's not such a sinister backstory of self-interest driving things. I don't know about today, but I'm the past engineers would pretty definitely say they'd never seen anything like the insinuation & top down steering that's so regularly casually implied, and it's remarkable how this casual accusation of rot is left to dominate. It's really unfortunate.
But I still think I'm principle there should ideally be harder separation. But I really doubt we can get an adequate funding source lined up. Chrome supports humanity's preeminent multi-media platform, is a huge gift to the world. And that online world that exists because of Chrome and FF, the general health of that world, that's what keeps Google alive & keeps the money pouring in. If Google can't invest in the web who would step up?.I'd love to see hundreds of millions a years allocated to this collective treasure we all enjoy, that runs on almost as many systems as Doom runs on, but alas there's just not the collective motive & will to support our great works.
I really hope Chrome can offer users a choice here, and that the choice really is good and that we can opt to leave this terrible 3rd party cookie world behind. I like the idea of not having a hard break, of this being more of a shift, one that the world can be more involved in navigating. Fingers crossed.
> In spite of Manifest V3 being a shit show, I continue to see all manners of evidence that Google wants genuine honest reform for user privacy. The attitude & negativity is at severely problematic levels, and Google actually gets that improvement & reform is necessary to keep going for another decade without some kind of boil over/explosion.
> I agree that Chrome in theory shouldnt be a part of Google. But generally I think there is incredibly little self-dealing,
OK, I'll bite. If Google cares about privacy so much, couldn't they simply disable 3P cookies like everyone else (minus Edge)? [1] Am we really to believe that the Chrome team is busy playing a game of 4D chess in the conquest for user privacy? I for one do not.
Everyone else disable 3rd party cookies but has unspecified/undocumented workarounds & carve-outs that they've had to keep expanding on. It broke a ton of login and valid diagnostic systems.
Google's playing hard mode by trying to actually specify how the new world is going to work. A third the current explainers they are working on relate to trying to get login flows working again. https://github.com/orgs/explainers-by-googlers/repositories . Google's commitment to specifying & standards has made this much harder.
Meanwhile they also have vastly more scrutiny. I'm not sure if the UK's CMA or ICO have updated the public on what their concerns are, but the UK in particular has come out strongly saying that they get full say in what Google does here, in one of the strongest repudiations of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace that the world has seen.
And meanwhile the slithering reptiles at the IAB are generating as much chaff nonsense and outcry as they can against Google, and putting forward proposals about making sure advertisers can tell what you had for breakfast & whether or not you flossed last night.
This is the least enviable spot to be in. The web has to change but trying to get the mandate for it to happen is neigh on impossible; giving users options & capabilities to pick seems like the only option at this stage.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. With regards to privacy and tracking Chrome/Chromium is so much worse than Firefox. Whether it be terrible defaults, exceptions which allow Google to see your system info, or an incognito mode which is a misnomer, Chrome just doesn't do privacy at all.
I can sympathise about general usability concerns but they don't really relate to the OP.
I personally run Ungoogled Chromium for anything that doesn't work in LibreWolf, which is fortunately not too much.
> In the story above, a competitor to Teams couldn't "keep up". Is that really Microsoft's problem? Should Microsoft have made Teams more useless, more expensive, or less integrated so that competitors that couldn't make their own cheaper or better version had a chance to keep getting customers?
Well, they should at very least make Teams interoperable like every other goddamn service should be - or be forced to do so.
I've been "engaging" with Facebook to delete my account, and it does feel awfully like I'm talking to an LLM. We entered a circular argument with me asking exactly why I needed a new email address to delete my account, and Facebook telling me that I hadn't provided them a new email address.
Like the OP I'll be sending a complaint to the government, in my case, Australia's Privacy Commissioner. I'm not super optimistic about whether they will do anything, having dealt with them in the past, but I'm still giving it a shot.
That's an interesting thread ... they claim they won't be compliant, which I applaud, but what will happen is that unwitting Signal users will end up being targeted by law enforcement. There are already precedents of people with "secure" phones or encrypted messaging apps being targeted, such as the Sky ECC case.
If Signal can’t be installed or updated via the App Store anyone, that’s already enough to exclude 99.9% of all users - no need to involve law enforcement.
My point wasn't that there was a need to involve law enforcement. My point was that overzealous law enforcement will use this as yet another excuse to crack down on people who value privacy.
"Signal, unwilling to implement easy to build software to comply with EU regulations, likely due to fiscal concerns, has shown itself placing profit far above the care and concerns of our next generation, our children, and the pedophiles that prey upon them, such heinous creators of child porn." signed EU press release.
The overwhelming majority of people living in the EU won't really care or even notice this new law/directive/(?) because they don't really pay any attention to what the EU is doing but yeah for most of of the remaining ones that will probably suffice.
Especially if the new law is very conveniently enacted during the most important sports event in the EU, with 99.99% eyeballs looking elsewhere. A very common tactic pretty much everywhere, but that doesn't make it stink less.
Quoted in major tech press first, and then in non-tech press if the case becomes prominent enough to get to national news, would have a serious poisoning effect.
They are not somehow bluffing or threatening this simply to try to change the law. It's a principled stance that they simply cannot provide E2E encrypted chat under such conditions. So either they break their protocol in which case their claimed offer would be a lie, or they leave.
Seems like the only choice they have, really. Also, by "leave EU" I'm pretty sure they mean not offer their app in the EU, so yes I think they expect their EU user base to be zero in this scenario.
To my knowledge, Signal makes a grand total of €0 in profit in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter, being a not-for-profit. It is not the purpose of a not-for-profit to grow exponentially. The Signal Foundation's mission is to ensure the continued existence of a secure messenger app. The people in charge of Signal take that mission very seriously, to their great credit.
There are already anti-circumvention mechanisms built into Signal to facilitate use in places like China and Iran, so they've shown no interest in compliance where that goes directly contrary to their mission. Should they be removed from the App Store in Europe, I imagine they'll work on making use of the EU's own push to open iOS up for alternative app stores / PWAs. (It's clear that the EU is unhappy with Apple's current take on compliance, so we can expect that to open up further.)
Doesn't really matter what Signal does. If this goes through then the next push will be to implement the scanning at the OS-level for non-compliant apps. Or just to demand that Android and iOS get the ability to block apps on a government list even if installed outside the app store. Sure, a few hackers (and the criminals) will always have secure communications but you can't win the fight for widespread secure communication against the government's will with technological means.
I think this seems like a fairly extreme and unlikely worst case scenario. I'd be sceptical about the EU's ability to actually implement something like this - there are limits to both what American companies are willing to do (e.g. Google leaving China), and what some of the more historically liberal European states are actually willing to tolerate from the EU level (imagine the blow to business confidence).
That's not to say that the present proposals aren't already bad enough.
I think it would be feasible for Whatsapp, Telegram and Signal to form a coalition that pledges to withdraw from any country or market that tries to pull these shenanigans, such that the sum of them is big enough to play that game.
The hardest to convince would be Whatsapp, but I think that Zuckerberg is one of the few big tech CEOs that still has principles, at least sometimes. I think it could happen.
And I believe that is exactly what the court was demanding they do. Push an update to uncloak the users that the court determines should lose their privacy.
Thanks to hn crowd, who explained it's not super difficult (and not going to lie, summer $500 discount), a Google pixel phone, soon running GrapheneOS, is on it's way.
Can GrapheneOS prevent detection of somebody sideloading Signal?
Probably not but you still need to have someone to someone to communicate with even if you manage to install it. If you can't get it on the mainstream app stores it will just be a niche app for "privacy nerds" and drug dealers (in the EU at least..)
