Source: Hacker News
Source: Ars Technica
Enlarge (credit: Ken Teegardin)
Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system.
Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa).
In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry’s profits.
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Source: Hacker News
Source: Boing Boing
The bitter, yearslong debate at the World Wide Web Consortium over a proposal to standardize DRM for web browsers included frequent assurances by the pro-DRM side (notably Google, whose Widevine DRM was in line to be the principal beneficiary) that this wouldn't affect the ability of free/open source authors to implement the standard.
The absurd figleaf used to justify this was a reference implementation of EME in open source that only worked on video that didn't have the DRM turned on. The only people this impressed were people who weren't paying attention or lacked the technical depth to understand that a tool that only works under conditions that are never seen in the real world was irrelevant to real-world conditions.
Now the real world has arrived, and it was just as predicted. Samuel Maddock is a free software developer who is creating a new browser called Metastream, derived from Chromium, the free/open version of Google's Chrome. Metastream is designed to allow users to "playback videos on the web, synchronized with other peers."
This is obviously not a copyright violation of any kind. Metastream allows users to stream copies of videos they are allowed to see, but synchronizes playback so they can watch them together. In an age of Twitch, this is obviously useful (also: it's something I personally ghost-wrote in to the BBC's 2006 Charter Renewal document as a favor to one of the people involved, so it's something that major rightsholder groups like the idea of, too).
Maddock wanted to allow his users to do this with the videos they pay to watch on Widevine-restricted services like Hulu and Netflix, so he applied to Google for a license to implement Widevine in his browser. Four months later, Google sent him a one-sentence reply: "I'm sorry but we're not supporting an open source solution like this" (apparently four months' delay wasn't enough time to hunt up a comma or a period).
The connection to the Article 13 debate should be obvious: for years, advocates for the Directive insisted that it could be implemented without filters, but of course it requires filters. Likewise, for year, EME's backers insisted that it wouldn't prevent us from having open, auditable, free-as-in-speech browsers that anyone could inspect, improve and distribute. But of course it does.
Of course it does.
I’m now only left with two options regarding the fate of Metastream: stop development of a desktop browser version, or pivot my project to a browser extension with reduced features. The latter requiring publishing to the Google Chrome Web Store which would further entrench the project into a Google walled garden.
I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me [Samuel Maddock]
Boy howdy, this is one subject where I loathe saying "I told you so", but... I sure told you so.[1] [Diaz/Hacker News]
(via Four Short Links)
Source: Ars Technica
Enlarge / An artist's rendering of Google's current reputation. (credit: Aurich Lawson)
It's only April, and 2019 has already been an absolutely brutal year for Google's product portfolio. The Chromecast Audio was discontinued January 11. YouTube annotations were removed and deleted January 15. Google Fiber packed up and left a Fiber city on February 8. Android Things dropped IoT support on February 13. Google's laptop and tablet division was reportedly slashed on March 12. Google Allo shut down on March 13. The "Spotlight Stories" VR studio closed its doors on March 14. The goo.gl URL shortener was cut off from new users on March 30. Gmail's IFTTT support stopped working March 31.
And today, April 2, we're having a Google Funeral double-header: both Google+ (for consumers) and Google Inbox are being laid to rest. Later this year, Google Hangouts "Classic" will start to wind down, and somehow also scheduled for 2019 is Google Music's "migration" to YouTube Music, with the Google service being put on death row sometime afterward.
We are 91 days into the year, and so far, Google is racking up an unprecedented body count. If we just take the official shutdown dates that have already occurred in 2019, a Google-branded product, feature, or service has died, on average, about every nine days.
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Source: Hacker News
Source: Hacker News
Source: Kentucky.com -- State
A group of University of Kentucky students has started a hunger strike that they say won't end until the administration creates a "basic needs center" to help low-income students. The … Click to Continue »
Source: The Register
Researchers at the Black Hat Asia conference this week disclosed a previously unknown way to tap into the inner workings of Intel's chip hardware.…
Source: adafruit industries blog
Looking for ways to justify that fourth cup of coffee for the day? There are MANY studies on caffeine consumption including ones that look at fat burning enhancement, ideal dosage and timing. Let’s take a closer look at a 2018 study which we have pointed out before, but never took the time to explain how it works. The military department of defense and biotechnology have developed an algorithm that reduces our need for caffeine by 65% while increasing our alertness by 64%. How do we apply it to ourselves for optimal coding and focused hardware development?
The above screenshot was generated using the 2B-Alert Web page. This site was developed by the same military researcher who wrote up the study on “Caffeine dosing and strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss“. Once you signup to create a free login it will ask you to set your unbelievable strong password. If you can get yourself through the password process it is on to typing in sleep data and caffeine dosages. The site provides automatic conversion from different caffeine sources so you don’t have to figure out how decipher milligrams on your own.
There are three graphs that can be generated once the sleep and caffeine data is entered. All of these are based on the Unified Model of Performance (UMP) which predicts effects of sleep loss and caffeine, as a function of time of day.
Mean Response Time – More alert means lower values. You can see above that each cup of coffee I consume creates a slight decrease in response time (faster, more alert). I found that less than four cups of strong 8oz aeropress coffee left gaps in my day where I got slower.
Mean Speed – This chart again shows clear peaks at coffee consumption times of 7am, 10am, 1pm and 3pm. My speed is projected to increase through the day. I tried generating graphs with only 1 cup and 2 cups of coffee a day, but it showed my performance was pretty much over by 4pm if I didn’t keep on chugging the black juice.
Lapses – The less lapses you have the better. Again the 4 cup model seemed to keep my lapses to a minimum for a 8 – 6pm work window.
While the 2B-Alert webpage is a bit clunky to use it does allow one to plugin exact sleep periods and specific caffeine doses for up to a week at a time. If you knew you were going to be in a sleep deprived situation and wanted to calculate the ideal caffeine consumption this would be the tool to use. My interest was more in daily performance to keep up a consistent work pace so my sleep schedule and coffee consumption look the same for each day.
