> Personally I'd prefer true pay-as-you-go without hard limits, even if it's a bit more expensive. To me the point is to sign-up-and-forget-it without having to worry if I'm within those limitations.
Sure, if you can set a max budget. Otherwise, you'd constantly have to worry about the unbounded cost.
Interesting. Presumably, LAPSUS had access to Windows source code but still decided to go after comparatively low-fruit like Bing and Cortana instead of the digital gold that is Windows.
Wasn't Windows' source code leaked a number of times already?
I think Bing and Cortana will have some "algorithms" that might be worth a lot more for the right buyer. I mean Google's search algorithm is one of the best kept secrets in the industry.
> I know they've made it available to some universities and large customers also can get access.
And, IIRC, infamously the Chinese government too, because they made it a pre-condition of them purchasing Microsoft licenses that they must have source code visibility.
Well, there is for sure a lot to criticize about the CN government, but this precondition seems to me very natural (the OS is a very natural place for possible backdoors, otherwise...)
Windows source code is fairly widely available, as in government agencies, universities and others already have access. I'm sure this means anyone motivated enough could get it if they really wanted to. Of course even looking at it is problematic if you want to work on open source operating systems later, so I'm not sure why you'd voluntarily choose to do this.
It can be useful even if you're not directly incorporating it into your code. For example you might want stronger guarantees than the API documentation offers (e.g. "this function will only ever return values between this and that in this particular version of Windows"), and being able to read the code to check if your assumptions are valid is very useful. I've worked in function hooking before and ReactOS has been a very useful resource on occasion.
When public documentation for the Hyper-V APIs sucks the way that it does, I'd be willing to risk not being able to write a operating system later if I could figure out a side project now ;)
I'm thinking of the HCS docs (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/api/hcs/over...). There's very poor documentation of the different types of VMs/Containers you can launch and how to launch them, I'm not sure how much of this is intentional or due to the newer container APIs being too new, but it's super frustrating when you're trying to understand how WSL2 or Windows Sandbox work (or honestly, how to use Windows containers without Docker).
I think you misspelled "dumpster fire". Microsoft is known for going to extreme lengths to maintain backward compatibility, but for Windows in particular this means code that's been hacked on for decades.
At least, more people will now be exposed to our utter hypocrisy. I used to be a staunch supporter of a free unrestricted internet but the disproportionate power US has is unsustainable - and frankly a threat to sovereign nations. China's firewall seems to have been the right path after all.
Oh please. I don't use Facebook, but the only hypocrisy I've seen is Russian news on Youtube. Russia24, for example, actually banned my country (and probably others except Russia) lol, they were getting too many comments from Ukraine, I guess.
This new rule allowing people to call for death to invaders is pretty idiotic, though. I think they made it so people would stop getting reported/banned for calling Russians fascists... a lot of that going on right now.
It is ignorant to reduce US policies into an ally or not dichotomy. An entity being allied with the US does not mean that it will always work in the interest of the US, e.g., Germany's NS2 project. And US-Ethiopian relations have deteriorated significantly in the past two years. Partly due to Trump siding entirely with Egypt in the Nile/GERD contention, going so far as to state Egypt should bomb the dam. And more recently, due to US engagement in the horrific Northern Ethiopian war, where human rights violations have been committed by all sides. However, the US has only enacted sanctions against the Ethiopian government and its allies. And some Ethiopian officials have accused the US of abetting the rebels.
The Ethiopian civil war is sad and horrific and has resulted in millions displaced. All sides have committed reprehensible crimes. There are, however, many human rights activists like David Alton, the co-author of this opinion piece, and Mukesh Kapila that either ignorantly or willingly disregard the complexity and nuances of this horrible war.
Point number 1) Hate speech has indeed increased and was essentially unavoidable due to Ethiopia's very ethnicized regions. Tigrayans and, to a lesser extent, Amharas have been facing the brunt of it. Most of it is on social media like Facebook and Twitter, which lack the skill to handle Ethiopian languages. The article claims that the government is peddling hate speech by using words like "terrorists" to describe the group that is currently carrying out an insurgency. The group TPLF, which had ruled Ethiopia for almost three decades until 2018, started the war in November 2020 by attacking federal bases in Ethiopia's Tigray region.
Point Number 2) TPLF rule was very ethnicized. TPLF had ensured that most of the personnel and leadership in crucial institutes like the military were held by their ethnic group. As a result, tens of thousands of soldiers and many commanders mutined with TPLF. And not only did Ethiopia lose personnel, but they also lost their most mechanized command to TPLFs initial attack, which is how TPLF currently has SAM missiles. The government had no choice but to mobilize militias and has tried to limit them as much as possible.
The reality of war is that it always results in collateral damage and crimes against civilians, and very seldom can meaningful actions be taken to hold the perpetrators accountable. This is equally true for third-world countries as it is for first-world countries. So when we see US and UK commit reprehensible crimes without any accountability, I find it hard to expect even more from a third-world country that is essentially fighting what it believes is an existential war. Nonetheless, Ethiopia has announced that it has already sentenced dozens of its soldiers to jail for crimes and is investigating more, although scant information has been released about each case. But I don't think countries, in general, are open about what is going on in their military courts.
Point number 3)
Since all the government and its people believe they are fighting an existential war against insurgents, I find it unsurprising that the "with us or against us" mentality has materialized. I mean, tens of thousands have died, millions of people are displaced, and entire communities have been destroyed. We can look back twenty years and see that the shutdown of discussion is entirely expected and frankly more justified in this scenario.
Point number 5) The international community is divided because the situation is not what this opinion piece claims. The war has a decade-long history and is very complex. Opinion pieces like these that ignore this reality only harm the people. We've seen statements from well-known activists who completely disregard the suffering of some people at the hands of the insurgents because they harped on only one aspect of this war. For example, right now, the insurgents are in Amhara and, to a lesser extent, Afar looting, killing civilians, and stealing food aid destined for the hundreds of thousands of IDPs in those regions. Despite this, you can still see purported human rights activists encourage the insurgents and disregard the suffering of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
This war is horrible and must end as soon as possible, but it is not a genocide. Shortsighted solutions will only worsen the situation and destabilize the entire region. We must be mindful of our actions and recognize how our previous methods have only resulted in a worse situation that, in addition, to the increased suffering, damaged EU and caused a rise to illiberal views. We should, instead, create an environment for peace and facilitate aid to all the suffering people in Tigray, Amhara, and Afar.
And this "other way" won't be cryptocurrency. Countries are and will continue to push for e-currency. It is simply too much power and granular control to give up.
This is entirely the media's fault. Sadly most journalists no longer know the word impartiality. They instead focus on creating narratives that fit their views and push them onto the masses. Nothing is more infuriating and disappointing than seeing simple established facts being distorted and twisted into something it's not. And this includes reputable media such as Washington Post and NYTimes. I think Reuters might be the only news agency keeping sensationalism and bias to the minimum.
I think ultimately this is why Apple and Google will get off with a slap on the wrist - like Korea, Japan, et al, we have our state industries that compete in the global economy. Apple and Google are our champion competitors, and while the US wants to appear principled, we also want to crush our global competitors. There is a snowflake's chance in hell that the US is going to cripple our champions in the name of principles, because it's not principles that are the concern, but the appearance of being principled. Why would we help the non-US businesses compete with the home team?
"Why would we help the non-US businesses compete with the home team?"
Because your home team is trashing your house, racketeering your businesses and pissing in your garbage bins. They harm US consumers first and foremost
Problem is, it's hard to find these consumers who are 'harmed' and clamoring for redress of their grievances. I'm one of them and I'm actually very happy with the value delivered per dollar in the existing mobile space.
Other businesses harmed? Maybe, but if you think that Epic is going to drop their prices 30% in lockstep with a hypothetical elimination of app store fees, I have a bridge to sell you. This dream of a breakup of Google and Apple is not going to be the boon to consumers that some idealists are imagining.
> if you think that Epic is going to drop their prices 30% in lockstep with a hypothetical elimination of app store fees, I have a bridge to sell you.
While not 30%, they did drop 20% when switching to their own payment processing [0]. And even if they didn't, more money to them allows them to hire more developers to make their games better for their customers.
If I were you, I'd change or delete this comment. You've mentioned specific details which would make it very easy to identify you. And disparaging your company when you are already in a precarious situation is not ideal.
Being fired for complaining about dysfunctional corporate bureaucracy is absolutely ridiculous. I’m not saying someone lying about or slandering their employer should go unpunished, but everyone, everywhere should be entirely free to criticize their employer for valid concerns, in private and in public. Anything less creates a further tilts the power imbalance between employees and their employer in favor of the employer. This is bad for labor markets and can slowly destroy companies from the inside.
I agree, and OP, remember you can use the support email at the bottom of the site for this sort of thing (since you probably can’t edit the comment yourself at this point).
If we think rationally, why would a nation state put in effort to block ONE single search term to hinder information spread while still letting multiple other queries give the same results? There is zero to gain from that.
Sure, if you can set a max budget. Otherwise, you'd constantly have to worry about the unbounded cost.