No, the EU has made it illegal to extort payment before allowing people to opt-out of data collection or profiling.
but only in the context of the DMA (since facebook is a giant). this rule does not apply for smaller sites (like most news outlets)
Readit Newsjuanpicardo commented on Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law ca.finance.yahoo.com/news... · Posted by u/Aldipower
juanpicardo commented on Blender releases their Oscar winning version tool blender.org/download/rele... · Posted by u/appleaday1
Can someone explain the title to me? What does it mean to release a "version tool"? Or do they have a special version for Oscar winners which is now publicly released? Or is this just some extra tool you can put on top of regular Blender? I simply don't follow.
I think the title is just nonsense. It's only about the release of a new version of Blender, which was used to make Flow.
what do you mean? other countries have demanded the same, e.g. China.
China only requires it for their citizens. The UK asked access to any person's data in the world.
juanpicardo commented on The Toyota Prius transformed the auto industry spectrum.ieee.org/toyota-... · Posted by u/pseudolus
I sometimes chuckle that most of the cool Lexuses are now Priuses under the hood!
But that’s a good thing. I own a Toyota Corolla hybrid myself, and hybrids are one of those things that I can say I’ve completely changed my mind about. I used to dislike the idea of hybrids, because I assumed that the overall system complexity must be higher than either an ICE, or an EV. And I’m a sucker for simple systems, so I thought it’s either EV, or nothing.
Then I looked into how hybrids work. Specifically Toyota hybrids. And came away totally amazed. It’s an amazing system, and much simpler than a traditional ICE car. It doesn’t really have a gearbox, or a clutch, or a starter. The engine is a normal atmospheric engine, so no turbines, overcompression, and the issues that come with it. Furthermore, the engine is typically configured to use the Atkinson cycle, which puts less stress on it. And, the engine has a chain drive, so no belts to change, and by design gets stressed a lot less than in a traditional ICE, because the stop-start load is carried by the electric motor. Also, it can’t really have trouble starting in cold weather, much like an EV. All of that boils down to crazy reliability.
I’m at a point where if I’m looking for a car that uses fuel, it’s only cars that use the Toyota hybrid tech (or similar) that I’m looking at. At the moment it’s just Toyota, Lexus, most Ford hybrids (but not all).
Other companies have hybrids that are liable to my original concerns about massively increased complexity. As an example, VW hybrids have an electric motor within their DSG gearbox. So you have all the complexity of their modern ICEs (turbines, DSG, whatnot) plus additional hybrid related complexity.
I was also worried about my wrong perception of hybrids being too complex. I recommend people to check on how e-CVT transmissions work, they are quite amazing and simple.
I also have now an hybrid Corolla (the station wagon version the US does not get. Because we all now Station wagons are the superior form of car.)
juanpicardo commented on Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video] youtube.com/watch?v=itpcs... · Posted by u/HelloUsername
Switch 2? Switch to what?
2 switch 2 switch 2
juanpicardo commented on Why don't we use awnings anymore (2022) thecraftsmanblog.com/why-... · Posted by u/samclemens
Curiously enough, here in Spain they're still pretty common nowadays, as lots of houses purposely incorporated green awnings, both to protect an exponentially-growing number of these houses from harsh sunlight during summer season, and to presumably 'soften' the arrival to the city of an increasing quantity of newcomers from rural Spain, as they already were very familiarized with them and, the designers thought, would find spots of green on the building more appealing comming from a greener countryside.
awnings also make a difference when getting a home's energy efficiency certificate. having them in your south facing windows helps a lot getting a higher score.
and to be clear, the european attitude to this regulation would be, "try again, better this time"
not ah yes, let's go back to having no regulation of corps tracking people.
People would be quite enthusiastic to more regulation which required no cookie banners where users had, eg., expressed a preference for no tracking at the browser level. And likewise, to require the provision of such "no-tracking signals".
I suspect something like this is on the horizon, and in part, something google was trying to head-off with its 3rd party cookies stuff.
"more, better!"
This is particularly true in the case of Cookie Banners. regulation has been clarified and now most sites do have a explicit "reject all" button/link that is next to "accept all". This was not the case when the law was first introduced.
my home assistant integration for solar/energy monitoring did not register any data for feb 29. from midnight to midnight
The award of the contract for the outdoor advertising space (bus shelters, roadside space) in my city was tied to providing and maintaining a cheap metro-area wide bike sharing scheme. For 30ish euros a year I get unlimited 45 minute trips on bikes that are widely available, well maintained, and easy to use. In 2022 there were more than 10 million trips taken on these hire bikes and nearly 84,000 annual subscribers.
This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. There's not more ads, just a monopoly on who sells the space to advertisers. The city might be prettier without the advertisements but it seems a good trade off to be removing vehicles from the road and promoting healthy transport via the bike scheme.
it is absolutely possible to achieve the same without ads. your city simply does not want to do it.
juanpicardo commented on YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads old.reddit.com/r/youtube/... · Posted by u/Jakob-G
They're all like that. A whole back I reported an obvious real estate scam using Wayne Gretzky and some Blue Jays player (I'm in Canada). The reply was it didn't break any policy.
When ads are the primary source of revenue, there's zero incentive to police the platform
Last time I reported one the replied said that even thought the ad broke their policies, they wouldn't remove it