buran77 (u/buran77) - Readit News

buran77 commented on Europeans' health data sold to US firm run by ex-Israeli spies ftm.eu/articles/europe-he... · Posted by u/Fnoord

Hnrobert42 · 2 days ago

Meta was recently fined 200M€ for offering that choice. Seems unfortunate, but maybe I misunderstood.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/03/meta_ec_dma_sulk/

buran77 · 2 days ago

The law defines what companies can or cannot do around privacy. So Meta can't go around telling users to pay to get the privacy the law affords them anyway or conversely, if users don't pay they don't get the privacy.

The root of the issue is probably the "freely given consent" that the law defines. If Meta charges users unless they consent to something, then the consent isn't freely given.

buran77 commented on Benn Jordan’s flock camera jammer will send you to jail in Florida now [video] youtube.com/watch?v=qEllW... · Posted by u/givemeethekeys

almosthere · 4 days ago

It is weird to me that we got to a point where we are being literal about the law again, instead of the spirit.

I guess laws should no longer say:

A license plate should be attached to a car.

Instead it should say:

All vehicles that don't display their license plate for cameras of any kind are illegal, the spirit of this law is to make it so we can identify through the number assigned to the vehicle from the state that identifies it is obvious if a picture is taken of the vehicle from the front or the back.

Better yet, judges and legal experts should just stop playing these games with words and figure out a new way to make things that are supposed to be legal, legal.

buran77 · 4 days ago

> It is weird to me that we got to a point where we are being literal about the law again, instead of the spirit.

The "spirit" of any law requiring license plates on vehicles is that the license plate can be read under normal conditions. The letter of the law may have been more generic, although many countries define very precisely everything about the plate, its condition and legibility. So demanding visible plates is exactly in the spirit of the law. What's the point of a license plate that nobody can read?

People exploited the letter of the law by having a license that was illegible somehow. Covered, faded writing, flipped under the motorcycle seat, etc.

> vehicles that don't display their license plate for cameras of any kind are illegal

License plates predate traffic cameras and the requirement for readable plates has been in force in many countries since for almost all that time. The license needs to be visible first and foremost so humans can easily identify a car. It can be police or a witness when someone runs you over.

Cameras automate this so they make abuse far easier. But the need was always there for various legitimate reasons.

Almost no law would survive if everyone was allowed to just take some literal interpretation of their own choice. The attitude that "well technically the law says" is usually shot down by any judge for good reason. Someone could have a lot of fun with your right to "bear arms".

buran77 commented on PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage tomshardware.com/pc-compo... · Posted by u/speckx

throwaway48476 · 21 days ago

The crude composition defines a range of possible products, not exactly ratios. Longer chain hydrocarbons are also cracked to yield more light products.

buran77 · 21 days ago

> defines a range of possible products, not exactly ratios

I'm not sure I follow, varying range necessarily implies varying ratios (e.g. a product missing from the range means its ratio is zero).

Even when in theory you can obtain some higher quality products, the composition of the crude can make it too complex and expensive to practically obtain them.

You don't want to refine gasoline from heavy crude, especially in winter when demand is lower. For gasoline or kerosene you want to start from lighter crude. Same with many undesired components (either from the crude or resulting from the refining methods), the more you have, the more complex the refining, and the resulting ratio of products you obtain varies.

So in practice what you get out of the refining process absolutely depends on the characteristics of the crude, and many other things like market demand or the capability of your refinery.

Same as with silicon. The process to make the wafer results in different quality if you want to make low tech or cutting edge semiconductor products.

buran77 commented on PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage tomshardware.com/pc-compo... · Posted by u/speckx

adastra22 · 22 days ago

none of those finished products come out of the ground that way.

buran77 · 21 days ago

Neither do chips, even if they all start as silicon from the ground. What the earlier comment was saying is that the actual composition of crude oil varies by location so you aren't necessarily getting the same ratio of finished products at the process. With silicon you have a bit more control over what goes into the fab. But you're still at the mercy of demand from the market.

buran77 commented on How Cops Are Using Flock's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11... · Posted by u/pseudalopex

tptacek · 25 days ago

The thing about this Texas abortion Flock story is: whether or not your muni keeps Flock, absolutely no municipality should have out-of-state data sharing on (arguably, none of them should have any data sharing on at all --- operationally, departments do just fine making phone calls and getting the data they need).

This is totally configurable inside Flock. It's very easy for a police department to do. Sometimes they'll argue that they need to keep sharing open because sharing is reciprocal --- that's not true (in fact, you don't even need to have Flock cameras to get access to Flock data; that's a SKU Flock has!).

We piloted Flock with open sharing (my commission got consultation for the police General Order for ALPRs in our municipality, we pushed for no sharing alongside a bunch of other restrictions, we got most of what we wanted but not the sharing stuff). When the pilot ended and the board needed a go-no-go on deployment, another push got made on sharing and we got out-of-state sharing disabled as a condition of deployment. Then at contract renewal, when the writing was on the wall that we were killing the contract†, our police department turned off all sharing.

Even if you're not worried about stuff like reproductive health care (you should be), it doesn't make sense to allow departments that don't share your General Orders direct access to your telemetry.

† I wasn't a supporter on this for complicated reasons.

buran77 · 25 days ago

> arguably, none of them should

Indisputably, once someone has a hammer, especially one that grants them this much extra power, they will go looking for nails. In 2025 those who still defend those "hammers" with the wide-eyed impression that they can somehow control them once they're out there are at best showing hubris, lack of foresight, and disregard for the history books.

To be more clear, when you push for "less sharing" and somehow get it, you aren't actually getting what you want, you're just getting less of what you didn't want. It's like when the waiter asks you how much spit you want in your soup, the correct answer is to kick the waiter out not to demand a minimal amount.

buran77 commented on McDonald's is losing its low-income customers latimes.com/business/stor... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

swatcoder · 25 days ago

You're probably imagining two black coffees, and all three drinks being of modest size like medium.

But if you turn those into "specialty" coffees and upsize them, and then add ~10% sales tax, it's very plausible that the price was closer to $20 than $10.

Between prices inflating and people's tastes being pretty unmoderated and indulgent for a long while now, the total cost of "everyday" expenses adds up quick.

Even the simple black drip coffee drinks that have basically no material or labor cost are priced at $2-4 in a lot of places now because people have become so dependent on the habit of treating themselves to one, and often a very large one, that they've become price insensitive and easily exploited by any coldly calculating business.

buran77 · 25 days ago

> if you turn those into "specialty" coffees and upsize them, and then add ~10% sales tax

Right off the bat, it's McDonalds, there are no "specialty" coffees. And the sales tax is irrelevant, what matters is what comes out of the pocket.

$20 for McD-quality coffees and soda is insanely expensive. It puts it above places like Starbucks which makes no sense because there's a Starbucks literally 50m/150ft away from that very same McD.

Pictures of the menu at the closest McDonald’s to MacArthur Park show the coffees at ~$4 and sodas at ~$2-3 all large, which is a more realistic number but still only around half the quoted amount.

buran77 commented on How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA heise.de/en/news/How-a-Fr... · Posted by u/i-con

KK7NIL · 25 days ago

If you ask PRC shills, it's just around the corner because this one Chinese lab demonstrated a very small part of the system. And a surprising number of westerners fall for that crap.

My guess is that it's at least 10 years away, but that could obviously change depending on what resources they're willing to commit. But even at that point they'll be 2 decades behind ASML's EUV tech so it probably won't be competitive.

buran77 · 25 days ago

> If you ask PRC shills

GP must have been asking for the non-PRC shill opinion.

> My guess is that it's at least 10 years away,

That doesn't sound at all like a lot. China has a uniquely effective industrial espionage... industry, combined with a very thick geopolitical skin and disregard for international demands. This helps accelerate any process that others have already perfected.

We'll start to see the real deal if/when China eventually catches up to the leaders in every field and the only way to pull ahead is to be entirely self propelled (you can't take advantage of someone else's draft when you're in front of the pack).

buran77 commented on Apple's iPhone overhaul will reduce its reliance on annual fall spectacle bloomberg.com/news/newsle... · Posted by u/doener

throwaway48476 · 25 days ago

Increasingly phones are being obsoleted by software and not the hardware which is still technically capable of running n+7 yearly OS. 10 years would be a good target for software support.

buran77 · 25 days ago

Manufacturers will look to price the OS support into the product. Customers will see an overpriced phone because it has ten years of support or a cheaper one with five years support and will think "I'd rather buy a new one in five years, I need a battery replacement anyway". I'd be very curious to see how the market responds to this, but I suspect manufacturers will set prices in such a way as to lead the customer towards a predetermined choice.