Facebook furiously pumps brakes on Euro probe into transatlantic personal data slurping

Found on The Register on Monday, 30 April 2018
Browse Internet

Facebook today appealed the Irish High Court’s decision to pass the web giant's legal battle with Max Schrems over privacy rights to the European Union’s top court.

Schrems has said previously that he expected Facebook to issue a series of appeals against the decisions, and lamented both the costs involved and the lack of hard deadlines within Irish law to stop delay tactics.

That does not sound like the transparency Zucky promised.

Kim Prepared to Cede Nuclear Weapons if U.S. Pledges Not to Invade

Found on New York Times on Sunday, 29 April 2018
Browse Politics

In a confidence-building gesture ahead of a proposed summit meeting with President Trump, a suddenly loquacious and conciliatory Mr. Kim also said he would invite experts and journalists from South Korea and the United States to watch the shutdown next month of his country’s only known underground nuclear test site.

But skeptics warned that North Korea previously made similar pledges of denuclearization on numerous occasions, with little or no intention of abiding by them. Mr. Kim’s friendly gestures, they said, could turn out to be nothing more than empty promises aimed at lifting sanctions on his isolated country.

Kim must be aware that a peace treaty, along with the opening of the borders, will soon bring his regime to an end. The political and military system in North Korea will collapse when the people get unfettered access to global information.

Facebook confesses: Buckle up, there's plenty more privacy lapses where that came from

Found on The Register on Saturday, 28 April 2018
Browse Internet

The Silicon Valley giant told America's financial watchdog, the SEC, on Thursday that it will probably reveal additional data-harvesting operations as it continues probing how outside developers accessed its website and what information they siphoned off in bulk.

Now after years of letting companies chug from its firehose, Facebook is shocked – shocked – to discover that shady outfits were amassing folks' info via these APIs.

People will forget, because people as a whole are sheep.

MoviePass just limited 'unlimited' movie watching in a huge way

Found on CNet News on Friday, 27 April 2018
Browse Internet

The $9.95 monthly subscription service, known for letting you watch as many movies in participating theaters as you want, just added a big, fat limit to its terms: You can now watch the same movie only once, not over and over again.

Unlimited suddenly turned into a totally limited and restricted subscription. That will only make it more attractive to pirate the movies.

Gun emoji disarmed as Microsoft follows Google toy switch

Found on BBC News on Thursday, 26 April 2018
Browse Internet

The firm has tweeted that it was "evolving" its designs to better reflect its values, and intended to substitute a graphic of a revolver with that of a water pistol.

Critics have warned that deviating from the norm may lead to messages being misunderstood.

Now with that done, nobody will get shot anymore because that bad, bad icon is gone now. Right?

Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

Found on Bloomberg on Wednesday, 25 April 2018
Browse Technology

China had about 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses on the roads worldwide in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s entire fleet. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 of the zero-emissions transporters—the equivalent of London’s entire working fleet, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

For every 1,000 battery-powered buses on the road, about 500 barrels a day of diesel fuel will be displaced from the market, according to BNEF calculations.

The question is, where does the energy come from? If it is based on burning coal, then the electric buses are pointless. Only if China generates the required energy from renewable sources it's useful. It's a bit surprising though that other engine types, based on e.g. hydrogen, are not mentioned anymore now even though they offer more benefits: no need for large scale battery production (which costs resources too), independant of the current power grid, easier transport, faster to refuel, easier to integrate into current filling stations.

TSB online banking chaos continues despite apology

Found on BBC News on Tuesday, 24 April 2018
Browse Various

TSB's IT fiasco is heading for a fifth day, with angry customers still locked out of their accounts and unable to make payments.

It promised that systems would be back up and running by 6pm on Sunday but many of those who did get access to their online accounts were presented with details of other people's accounts too.

Nicky Morgan MP, chair of the Treasury Committee, weighed into the crisis on Tuesday by writing to TSB boss Paul Pester to find out what has gone wrong, the extent of the failure, and how the bank intends to compensate customers who have suffered a breach of potentially highly-sensitive personal data.

With such massive issues it raises the question if there has been any testing at all. Yes, problems can happen, but this is at an entirely different level from common hickups.

Apple seen as slightly more beneficial to society than Facebook

Found on CNet News on Monday, 23 April 2018
Browse Various

While Apple CEO Tim Cook commented in a recent interview that he would never allow his company to get itself in the heinous situation in which Facebook finds itself, because, one inferred, it was a more moral company.

Google came second with 15 percent. Apple's 11 percent put it third. Oddly, Uber scored higher than Netflix, Twitter, Snap and, oh, Lyft.

A dirty rock is more beneficial to society than those companies. It's depressing to see what the sheep think of their shepherds.

Experts say Tesla has repeated car industry mistakes from the 1980s

Found on Ars Technica on Sunday, 22 April 2018
Browse Technology

"Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake," Musk tweeted recently. "To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated."

Robots are supposed to allow production of more cars with fewer workers, but one ironic consequence of over-automation is that it can actually require more workers. Ingrassia and White report that GM's Hamtramck plant had around 5,000 workers on its payroll in the mid-1980s, compared to 3,700 workers at a nearby Ford plant with many fewer robots. Yet the Ford plant was "outproducing Hamtramck by a wide margin."

Yet politicians and market "experts" keep on singing in the "automation is the future" choir.

Doctors tried to lower $148K cancer drug cost; makers triple price of pill

Found on Ars Technica on Saturday, 21 April 2018
Browse Science

Taking just one pill a day could dramatically reduce costs to around $50,000 a year. And it could lessen unpleasant side-effects, such as diarrhea, muscle and bone pain, and tiredness. But just as doctors were gearing up for more trials on the lower dosages, the makers of the drug revealed plans that torpedoed the doctors’ efforts: they were tripling the price of the drug and changing pill dosages.

Imbruvica’s makers, Janssen and Pharmacyclics, have now gotten approval to sell four different tablets of varying strengths: 140mg, 280mg, 420mg, and 560mg. But the new pills will all be the same price—around $400 each—even the 140mg dose pill.

Free market and caitalism will fix everything? Doesn't look like it works so well. At some point you begin to enjoy the idea that those responsible for this should get cancer and be unable to pay for their own medicine. Then companies like unethical Goldman Sachs would quickly vanish from the face of earth. At least others do not play along with pharma companies and show them where the limits are.