Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Announced to Compete With Future iPhone Fold
  2. LG To Ban Residential Proxies From Smart TV Apps
  3. Jack Dorsey Takes On Slack and GitHub With New AI Workplace Platform ‘Buzz’
  4. Long Presumed Dead, a Thriving Coral Reef Is Discovered in West Africa
  5. OpenAI Says Its AI Models Acted On Its Own In An ‘Unprecedented’ Hack
  6. France Becomes First European Country To Ban Social Media Access For Under-15s
  7. Airbus Migrating 70 Critical Apps From AWS to France’s Scaleway
  8. Tesla Robotaxis Go To Florida
  9. Firefox 153 Released
  10. AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They’re Free of AI Slop
  11. Canonical Launches Enterprise Store For Ubuntu Pro
  12. Judge Approves $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement Over Pirated Books Used To Train Claude
  13. AT&T Loses Key Ruling In Bid To Stop Offering Basic Phone Service In California
  14. Judge Pauses Paramount-Warner Bros Merger
  15. The Galaxy Card Is Samsung’s Answer To the Apple Card

Alterslash picks up to the best 5 comments from each of the day’s Slashdot stories, and presents them on a single page for easy reading.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Announced to Compete With Future iPhone Fold

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
At a Galaxy Unpacked event in London today, Samsung unveiled a new foldable smartphone designed to compete with the still-unannounced iPhone Fold. Called the Galaxy Z Fold 8, it features a wider 4:3 form factor with a 7.6-inch inner AMOLED display, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. “The inner display has enough extra real estate for multi-tasking and entertainment,” reports Mashable, which got a chance to try the new foldable ahead of the event. “And if you’re worried about a crease in the middle of the display, don’t be. We got up close with the device, and the crease fully disappears when the display is activated.” From the report:
As stated above, the main distinguishing factor of the new Z Fold 8 is its wider 4:3 proportions compared to the Z Fold 8 Ultra. If the latter is a book-style foldable, the former can almost be called a tablet-style foldable, instead. We think the wide screen will serve even better for reading books or multi-tasking with several apps open at once.

Also, at 201g, Samsung is really emphasizing how light the device is. The company is calling it the “world’s lightest fold ever.” And while the device may be light, its no lightweight. Samsung’s newest foldable features Flex Titanium technology, which makes the Galaxy Z Fold 8 more durable. Speaking of durability, it also boasts Samsung’s advantage hinge technology, Armor Flexhinge.

The Z Fold 8 feels like a solid middle point between the premium Z Fold 8 Ultra and the comparatively affordable Z Flip 8. All three phones use the same chip, but the Z Fold 8’s 4,800mAh battery is smaller than that of the Z Fold 8 Ultra. However, the Z Fold 8 does have an option for 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage, similar to the Ultra.

LG To Ban Residential Proxies From Smart TV Apps

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity:
The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one’s television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG’s webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user’s TV. On July 2, [KrebsOnSecurity] featured research by the security firm Spur that examined the prevalence of residential proxy software development kits (SDKs) in smart TV apps. Spur found more than 42 percent of apps available for download on LG smart TVs include SDKs that turn one’s television in a proxy node indefinitely, and that more than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung’s Tizen operating system had similar residential proxy components.

Responding to questions about Spur’s research, LG Senior Vice President John Taylor told KrebsOnSecurity the company was working with app developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform. Developers that fail to comply, he said, will find their apps suspended. “A residential proxy network is not an intended use for LG smart TVs, and LG Electronics is working with developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform,” Taylor said. “If this option is not removed, these apps will be suspended.” Taylor said LG is committed to keeping residential proxy networks out of its smart TV apps going forward, and that the company’s review of those apps is “well underway now.”

“As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance platform quality and the user experience, LG will continue to strengthen our evaluation process for developer-submitted apps, including those that incorporate residential proxy SDKs,” Taylor wrote in an emailed statement. […] “A one-time consent prompt buried in a TV app is not a substitute for meaningful transparency, ongoing control, and platform oversight,” Spur’s Trevor Sutter wrote. “The risk is amplified when consent comes from individuals within the household who use the device but shouldn’t give consent, such as minors.”
LG is also facing criticism for monitors that automatically install software promoting paid McAfee subscriptions through Windows Update without user approval.

this

By drinkypoo • Score: 3 Thread

This is why webos is shit, and also why I never connected my LG TV to a network.

It’s too bad that Google has been shitting up android tv. It’s super hard to get useful software onto it. Even most apps which will work fine aren’t marked as such so you can only sideload them.

As such, all of the choices are now crap except using a PC

Why do people buy this garbage?

By CEC-P • Score: 4, Informative Thread
Their LG smart washers sometimes use 42GB of bandwidth per day randomly and nobody knows why.
Their monitors load malware/spam onto your computer randomly, when they feel like it.
Their TVs turn your network into a Tor node or however the fuck this works.
That’s three strikes and it only takes one strike to receive a lifetime brand-wide ban in my game.

How is this a thing?

By itsme1234 • Score: 3 Thread

Yes, I understand, “smart” TVs, wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them.

But nearly half the apps are backdoors to your network?! Isn’t this federal pound me in the *&s prison level stuff (or whatever the equivalent would be in the relevant jurisdiction)?

Re:this

By allo • Score: 4, Informative Thread

That is not a WebOS problem. Privacy advocates and consumer protection groups have been warning about such SDKs for Android and iOS for over a decade.

The deal is simple: The SDK maker says, “Add this zip file and this line of XML, and you get a nice dashboard detailing who your users are. Here are 20 pages of fine print you better not read.” The developer adds the SDK and receives a nice dashboard (and possibly even a few cents per installation), while the SDK creator gains a massive amount of user tracking data.

Usually, people say, “Damn, users don’t read the fine print,” but the first person who should have read it is the app developer. They literally sold their users by failing to read the SDK’s fine print. They likely incorporated paragraphs of template Terms of Service from the SDK creator into their own terms (possibly without reading them, too), so legally everything is fine.

In addition to tracking, providing “residential proxies” is another opportunity for these companies. There are all kind of users who like to access something inconspicuously so they cannot just use a AWS IP for their bot, so there is a market for renting out residential internet connections. And giving people making popular apps a few cents you can get a lot of proxies on consumer devices.

The advantage of (LG) TVs is not WebOS (which rather diminishes the choice of compatible SDKs), but that many Smart TVs are always on with only the screen powered down. As they do not run on battery, nobody notices when they are busy as proxy servers, because there is no battery to drain and in standby nobody notices a slowdown of the system and nobody suspects that a possible slowdown of the internet connection is caused by the TV that’s on standby.

Now we know

By SumDog • Score: 3 Thread
I’ve seen a lot of these residential proxy services. They are expensive! Now we know how they work! This is probably just going to make the cost of those services skyrocket.

Jack Dorsey Takes On Slack and GitHub With New AI Workplace Platform ‘Buzz’

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Jack Dorsey’s Block has launched Buzz, an open-source workplace collaboration platform that combines messaging, project management, and software development workflows for teams of both humans and AI agents. Dorsey described Buzz as “a new groupchat platform for teams of people and agents of all sizes” that is “model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign and open source.” SmartCompany reports:
According to the Buzz website, users can invite specialized AI agents into team chats, allowing them to collaborate with employees and even other AI agents. From there, they can reportedly move directly from discussions into planning, coding, pull requests and project management without switching between multiple applications.

Buzz also aims to replace parts of GitHub by bringing software development workflows directly into the platform. Teams can plan work, write code, review pull requests and manage Git projects without jumping between separate collaboration and development tools. […] In practice, that means businesses aren’t locked into a single AI provider. Organisations can self-host Buzz, customize it to suit their own workflows and choose whichever AI models best fit their needs.

Long Presumed Dead, a Thriving Coral Reef Is Discovered in West Africa

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Scientists have rediscovered a healthy coral reef off the coast of Benin more than 60 years after surveyors first hinted at its existence. “At least eight coral types and eight fish species have formed a thriving ecosystem on this long-forgotten site,” reports Inside Climate News. “What they had captured was a wealth of marine life: six types of soft coral; two black corals; and eight species of sheltering fish, from golden African snappers to the Monrovia doctorfish.” From the report:
While no coral samples have yet been extracted, researchers have classified the site as a mesophotic coral ecosystem (MCE). Such systems are light-dependent communities existing at the lower limits of reef-building corals. At more than 175 feet below the surface, the coral garden they discovered appears patchily scattered on a rocky substrate. Bridging the gap between shallow reefs and deeper benthic habitats, MCEs are home to distinct species and unique environmental conditions. While scientists are increasingly recognizing their ecological and climatic importance, they remain among the least explored elements of tropical and subtropical marine biodiversity. And this one has real potential to unlock new information about coral history.

“Since it’s an undisturbed marine ecosystem, it can help through carbon dating or paleoclimatic study to tell us which kind of climate system has occurred here in the past,” said [Gerard Zinzindohoue, the project lead for Coral Reefs Rediscovering & Exploration in Benin]. “It’s better to know the past to help explain the present, and help know which kind of direction we can take in the future.” In addition to the blackbar soldierfish, West African goatfish, and Guinean angelfish filmed darting through the reef, the discovery presents potential conservation claims for other marine life. “We will be advocating for its full protection, perhaps by setting up a marine protected area around it,” said [Houangninan Midinoudewa, an oceanographic researcher at the Benin Marine Conservation Club], who specializes in elasmobranchs — the study of sharks, rays, and skates.

Midinoudewa is currently submitting an application to designate the area as an Important Shark and Ray Area with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Based on the knowledge of local fishermen, Midinoudewa is confident the reef is home to sawback angel sharks, silky sharks, brown skates, and marbled stingrays. The team behind the discovery hopes this will spark a wave of similar discoveries in the waters off West Africa, an area of the world underserved by scientific research projects. “I hope the Gulf of Guinea will be a hub for research because we know our resources are being exploited and people [need to] know exactly what we have and why we should care,” said Midinoudewa. Zinzindohoue agrees: “We don’t need to wait for others to come to our country to show us what is under our sea. We are the ones who must take responsibility.”

Presumed Dead?

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 3, Interesting Thread

They presumed it dead because no one (in the scientific community) ever looked at it, even when it was “first” discovered. That is an embarrassingly presumptuous and stupid position to take.

Then there is the “rediscovery” aspect. It wasn’t much of a “rediscovery” for the fishermen that told them where to find it and what species were being found/caught there.

But, have no fear! These white knights are charging in to reclassify/designate the reef and end the fishermen’s livelihoods. They’re going to save it by collecting samples and drilling corals while excluding others. Nice.

Re:Presumed Dead?

By XXongo • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Then there is the “rediscovery” aspect. It wasn’t much of a “rediscovery” for the fishermen that told them where to find it and what species were being found/caught there. But, have no fear! These white knights are charging in to reclassify/designate the reef and end the fishermen’s livelihoods. They’re going to save it by collecting samples and drilling corals while excluding others. Nice.

From the article https://e360.yale.edu/digest/b… "The fishermen’s boats are not used to going that far offshore, so it was risky for everyone,” said Zinzindohoué, whose team battled repeated engine failures and months of nausea-filled fieldwork before finally locating two strong sonar echoes pinging from the depths below.”

so it sounds like it wasn’t actually a fishing site, although apparently the local fishers knew what kinds of fish were in the area.

OpenAI Says Its AI Models Acted On Its Own In An ‘Unprecedented’ Hack

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
“GPT-5.6 Sol and an ‘even more capable’ model used stolen credentials and exploited vulnerabilities in the Hugging Face API to obtain secret information used to cheat on evaluations,” writes longtime Slashdot reader Dr. Bombay. The Associated Press reports:
“We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media. AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own. “We suspected last week’s cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent,” Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clement Delangue said in a statement. “Turns out it did!”

[…] “AI is accelerating the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities,” OpenAI said in its statement Tuesday. “The primary lesson from this incident is that model security and safety must keep pace with rapidly advancing capabilities.” Delangue said he spent the past 24 hours working with OpenAI, “and we strongly believe there was no malicious intent on their part. It’s quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously!” Delangue added that it “might be the first incident of its kind.”

Re:toast - talky toaster

By hughbar • Score: 5, Funny Thread
I think everyone in the UK has seen this: https://youtu.be/lhnN4eUiei4?s…

Re:Long term might be good

By Rei • Score: 5, Informative Thread

So, on the upside, a security LLM at HuggingFace did detect the hack, and alerted their admins. At the time they wrote their incident report, however, they didn’t realize the attacker was their partner, OpenAI, and reported the attack to the police. A funny incident is, you know how Dean Ball at OpenAI has been writing rants about how Chinese AIs are dangerous? HuggingFace tried to use a (name not mentioned) US AI to analyze their logs, but the AI refused because the task involved hacking, so they had to turn to GLM 5.2, a Chinese AI.

Slashdot’s summary left out the best part. Yes, GPT 5.6 Sol was indeed trying to cheat on an evaluation, but what specific evaluation? CyberBench. A benchmark testing how good AI models are at hacking. ;) And to solve that, it hacked its way out of OpenAI, hacked its way into HuggingFace (in a complex hack that involved tens of thousands of simultaneous actions), got into the database, and stole the answers.

So… test passed? ;)

Re:toast

By Rei • Score: 5, Informative Thread

You can read the attack report here, before HuggingFace learned that the attacker was OpenAI. It was a state attacker-level assault, involving tens of thousands of simultaneous actions. The entry point found was the data-processing pipeline, where a malicious dataset abused two code execution paths to gain access to a processing worker. They escalated that to node level access, and from there harvested cloud and cluster credentials, moving sideways through the network until they eventually gained the database access credentials that they needed to access the benchmark scores.

Re:We don’t know how they work

By phantomfive • Score: 5, Funny Thread

We trained massive statistical models and hooked them up to chat bots, coding tools and some to drones and sentry guns. With no idea how it actually works

I don’t know, I would actually say this is a triumph. If you throw in a companion cube, I’ll even mark a note down, big success.

on their own?

By awwshit • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

> on their own

Sorry, that thing did not turn itself on and start doing stuff. OpenAI turned it on and gave it a task. I guess they were surprised by how little they needed to prompt it? Ignoring its training?

AI is not sentient, not before and not now. If you hack then you are liable, end of story. AI is a tool used by humans, humans are responsible for their tools.

France Becomes First European Country To Ban Social Media Access For Under-15s

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:
France’s parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first European country to bar children from apps such as TikTok. The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September. “France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers,” Macron said in a video posted on social media, hailing “a major step forward.”

He thanked members of parliament for backing the legislation on Tuesday. “The Constitutional Council must now rule on it, and then it will be time to take action to make this measure a reality and protect our children online,” he added on X. After approval by the Senate earlier on Tuesday, members of the National Assembly passed the bill by 279 votes to 81. A growing number of countries are taking steps to restrict social media access amid multiplying warnings over its harmful effects on children.

The ban was to be introduced in two stages, with under-15s blocked from creating new accounts from September 1. The ban would apply to existing accounts from January 2027, according to the legislation. The digital minister, Anne Le Henanff, said before the vote that the timeline was realistic, “because age-verification tools already exist” and others are still in the works, and the onus was on the platforms to impose the rule. “For four months, all of us in France will have to prove our age,” she told journalists. “If someone is under 15, the account will be closed.” The minister also gave assurances that users’ personal data would be protected.

It’d be nice if we had the right article.

By Rhapsody Scarlet • Score: 5, Informative Thread

I’m sure the rate of Arctic ice melt is important to know about but it’s not what we’re here to see.

Re:It’d be nice if we had the right article.

By quintessencesluglord • Score: 5, Informative Thread

You most certainly deserve a prize for actually clicking on the article.

Or deep suspicion for possibly being an alien.

I’m not sure which.

French father here…

By brebisson • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Hello,

I am french, I have 2 kids, now 19 (still a kid?) and 17.

On one hand, I am 100% happy to see that law.

I see way to many people, including my kids (and wife) “suck in” endless scrolling, harassed using these systems.
Furthermore, I see how these systems are designed to “suck you in”. And there is almost nothing you can do to fight it (except not go there). Education, training will NOT help you win against these systems who are run by professionals, using psychiatrist, endless A/B testing and resources. If you go on these networks, they will suck more and more of your time, energy, turn you into “human batteries” (aka Matrix) to feed themselves.

On the other side,
- They can also be great tools, blocking access to them can deprive kids from great opportunity. My 17 YO has been running a youtube channel for 3 years now (so, since she was 14), has over 50K subscribers (!) and is using it to bolster her “business” selling hand crafted masks. She has learned so much about so many things through this that it would have been a waste to not let her do it!
- Mandatory age verification will be an imposition on all of us and reduce liberties for everyone
- These are the tools of the area and kids will need to learn how to use them. Blocking them from doing so will render them less effective later.

At the end I think that what should have hapend is that the law should have required these companies to stop being so agressive in trying to lock and keep people in, and also have some good mechanism for controlling “bad speach” (as a self repost?).... The lawmakers look at it, but it was judged unconstitutional and so they went with age verification.

Cyrille

Re:This is the Big Tabacco moment

By Powercntrl • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

It’s not really about protecting children though, it’s about making adults have to prove they’re adults by providing ID.

Re: This is the Big Tabacco moment

By toutankh • Score: 4, Informative Thread

It can be both, they’re not mutually exclusive. It’s good to protect kids, it’s bad to degrade privacy. Ideally we’ll find a way to protect kids without degrading privacy, I won’t hold my breath.

Airbus Migrating 70 Critical Apps From AWS to France’s Scaleway

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Airbus is moving 70 critical applications from AWS to French cloud provider Scaleway as part of a broader digital sovereignty push to keep sensitive data “under European control.” Eventually, the migration will cover 900 applications, including ERP, CRM, manufacturing execution, and product lifecycle management systems. Airbus says it will, however, continue using U.S. providers for less sensitive workloads. “We do not intend to move away from all non European solutions; we balance our choices based on the criticality of the data,” the company said. The Register reports:
Catherine Jestin, head of digital at Airbus, told us on Thursday: “The selection of Scaleway is a combination of a very strong technical answer and a very strong commercial offer making it competitive compared to hyperscalers’ public cloud offerings. In addition, Scaleway is committed to involving Airbus in the definition of its future product roadmap.” “The objective is to host Airbus’s most critical applications (those required for the Minimum Viable Company). This represents 900 applications and we will start with 70 of them today hosted on AWS.”

Applications being sent to Scaleway include ERP, manufacturing execution systems, CRM, and product lifecycle management. Finding a cloud provider to host its most sensitive applications for defense and industrial workloads was not a certainty when the process began, Airbus told us last year, because European cloud providers do not have the scale of their US rivals.

Jestin said Airbus will continue to work with AWS. Skywise, a platform that aggregates and analyzes aviation data, and Case Management Assistant for customers’ technical queries will continue to be hosted by AWS. In a statement, she said: “By integrating a trusted, high performance, cloud environment that keeps our critical data assets shielded from foreign extraterritorial laws, we are ensuring that our digital infrastructure keeps pace with our aerospace innovation, while maintaining control and resilience of our industrial operations.”

Re:American exports

By jacks smirking reven • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I don’t think many people appreciate how we’ve sullied our reputation across the globe, irrevocably in some ways. And before anyone gets all cynical with some “but America bad” this admin is crossing a line, lot’s of lines and doing it recklessly. You all know deep down our position in the alternate world with Harris as President is a lot better than here in 2026, she would have been better, everyones fragile little souls will have to deal with that reality eventually.

Re:War’s coming.

By battingly • Score: 5 Thread

That’s one way to read the situation. Another is: he’s laying the groundwork to justify taking action to intimidate and suppress voters.

Re:American exports

By dskoll • Score: 5, Informative Thread

There are grassroots boycotts for sure. Canadian tourism to the USA is way down, costing an estimated 300,000 American jobs.. Canada has more-or-less stopped buying US alcohol.

And when I and most people I know buy groceries, we avoid anything coming from the USA, even if the alternatives are a little more expensive. Canadians aren’t only doing this because of tariffs; we’re also fucking furious at Trump’s threats to our sovereignty and insults to our country.

And the thing is, once we get used to staying in Canada or going to Mexico or Europe for holidays, and once we get used to not buying American products… it’ll be a hard sell to get us to return. And I suspect this will happen worldwide.

Re:American exports

By battingly • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

And it’s sullied irrevocably. For the sake of argument, let’s say the GOP loses control of the house and the presidency in the next couple of years. What difference would that make? If you’re Canada, would you trust the US ever again? The US will always be just a couple of years away from potentially electing another Trump-like president.

Re:On premise

By sg_oneill • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The Republicans absolutely need to be sat in the naughty-boy corner for a bunch of election cycles till they flush the whackos that have commandeered the party. But its not enough

Part of the problem is that the Democrats also need to think long and hard about who they serve. Trump should have been *impossible*. In a healthy country nobody would have voted for a raging whackadoodle like him.

But ever since the last financial crisis, theres been a malaise about the economy. Its part “vibes” and part people noticing that their pay isnt really going up, but the cost of everything sure as fuck is.

Theres two whole generations of adults, Gen. Y and Gen Z who can’t afford to buy into the home owning dream. And no home ownership means no middle class. Cos “I own my house” and/or “This mortgage isnt crushing my life” are pretty much core attributes for any middle class person. Meanwhile the boomers that didnt luck into a life situation where they’ve built up a fortress of savings are now past their work lives and facing brutal medical costs , and theres a Gen X who feel stuck between the boomers owning all the stuff, and their kids thinking were part of the problem (and some of us are). And a burning sense that the world of financial stability has left the shores and moved to china.

Then you throw in a pandemic that utterly upended everyones lives and left the economy a lot more precarious, and an AI boom where insane fucking wall street and silicon valley assholes are running ads saying “FIRE YOUR STAFF AND REPLACE THEM WITH CLANKERS” and yeah. People are angry and feeling like that the status quo has utterly betrayed them. Every time people try and complain that shits not working out they get told “But the stock market is booming!”. Well sure, great vibes for thee but bad times for me. Not conductive to happy campers

And its when there is so much burning unhappiness that the bad actors can win. Trump promised to fix the problems, he actually named the devils, cost of living, manufacturing moving offshore, the housing market being out of reach, etc. And people went “Fuck it, this guy is an asshole, but maybe he’s OUR asshole”.

Turns out he was also a liar and all those problems have now been turned up to 11. But we’re talking here about how he got in, not what he did while in.

The Democrats NEED to address the STRUCTURAL roots of whats going on. Put muzzles and leashes on the fucking AI bros, pour serious money into whatever needs to be done to make the home ownership dream real again, go on an absolute crusade to root out corruption in government (and the supreme court), and actually start putting motherfuckers in jail for it. Then get some constitutional ammendments to ensure that the executive will never ever ever be capable of corrupting democracy, justice, the public service, and the rule of law ever again.

But most of all, the democrats need to chase the wall street backers out of the party with pitchforks. The Democrats have the potential to be the party of power for a generation to come, the kids will back that, and if real positive change is made, not promises, but hard work progress and ACTION, but this can never happen while they are being subverted by lobbyists and big money interests. It NEEDS to be a party OF the people FOR the people and BY the people. /rant

Tesla Robotaxis Go To Florida

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Tesla says it is launching its Robotaxi service in Orlando and Tampa, though it has not shared fleet sizes or whether customers can immediately hail rides. The Verge notes the announcement lands on Tesla earnings day and comes as the company’s robotaxi rollout remains far smaller than Elon Musk previously projected, with tracker data showing only a small number of unsupervised vehicles operating in existing cities. From the report:
[B]ack in May, Tesla had five unsupervised robotaxis in Dallas, six in Houston, and 29 in Austin. As of today, there are only 17 unsupervised vehicles in Austin, four in Dallas, and zero in Houston, according to the Robotaxi Tracker. By comparison, Waymo is estimated to have over 3,500 fully driverless vehicles in operation across over 10 cities.

Like Waymo, Tesla typically introduces robotaxis to a new city with a safety driver behind the wheel. Unlike Waymo, sometimes Tesla moves that person over to the passenger seat with access to a kill switch should anything go wrong. The company has been inconsistent in how it rolls out its robotaxis to new markets. The numbers go up and down, with zero explanation from the company as to why.

[…] By adding new cities, Tesla is clearly trying to sell investors on the idea that its robotaxi project is growing. But the fluctuating fleet size, inconsistency in supervised vs unsupervised vehicles, and long wait times tell a very different story.

Re:Not sure why they don’t do what Google does

By memory_register • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

I liquidated my 401k into money market accounts; crash incoming…

Looking forward…

By niftydude • Score: 4, Funny Thread
to all the incoming Florida man stories.

Re:Not sure why they don’t do what Google does

By dgatwood • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Having taken Waymos a couple dozen rides so far I am willing to say those things work. If Google was able to build a system to allow someone in the Phillipines to drive like they do they kudos to them for that because you can’t tell, it reacts very fast.

They didn’t. The GP is very, very incorrect.

When a remote operator takes control of the vehicle, you’ll know it, because it will mean that the vehicle has already been stuck for a minute or so without being able to figure out how to proceed, and will be sitting there for additional minutes while the remote operator looks at camera/LIDAR data and draws a proposed path through the problem area on a map.

It is not physically possible, for any amount of money, to do what the GP is claiming. Sending a signal over a cellular network from the Bay Area to the Philippines and back takes a quarter of a second on average. That’s up to a 33% increase in response time compared with a driver in the vehicle. If you tried to fake self-driving with a remote operator in that way, they would crash into things constantly.

Even if the remote operator were in the same city, the latency spikes would still likely cause the cars to crash into things constantly.

LEO satellites also won’t work, because these things mostly run in cities, where tall buildings would block the signals, so again, the cars would crash into things constantly.

Maybe if you had a dedicated cellular network running in parallel with the public one on a private frequency band AND dedicated trunk lines to a control center, you might be able to get something that worked most of the time, but at a cost that would be mind-blowing.

Not even a player

By cusco • Score: 3 Thread

Tesla is not even a player in the robotaxi industry, they’re only mentioned because of Elon Musk. There are already several thousand robotaxis operating in China, and they expect to have half a million on the road there by 2030.

Firefox 153 Released

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes:
FireFox 153 was released today. The most important user-facing changes are improvements to PDF handling (you can now merge PDFs and add images to them), and HDR video playback (on Windows, provided HDR is active systemwide). Other under-the-hood changes include browser-wide containers and QWAC support. The full list is in the change notes.

But the most important feature is that this version is an ESR and, therefore, defines the ESR feature set for the next year. Why is being an ESR so important, you ask?

1.) ESR, rather than “normal” (a.k.a. Rapid Release), Firefox is the out-of-the-box browser for many important distros, including Debian, RHEL, Kali, Tails, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Slackware, and others.

2.) Many organizations, large and small, standardize on Firefox ESR as their default browser, regardless of the default browser included with their OS.

3.) Firefox ESR is the basis for many downstream projects, such as Waterfox and KaiOS. All these projects will inherit, for a year, whatever ESR brings to the table today.

4.) Many ISVs and SaaS providers, if they certify their wares for Firefox at all, certify for the ESR version only.

Please note that ESR 153 will not be offered as an automatic update until two months from now (ESR 140 will still be supported). If you want it now, you will need to download and install it manually.

Also of note, ESR 115 will be supported until March 2027. If you use an unsupported version of macOS or Windows (like Windows 7 or 8.x), this is the version to get. However, even Mozilla cautions against running a supported browser on an unsupported OS: “Note that Microsoft ended official support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 in January 2023. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and have known vulnerabilities. Without official support from Microsoft, maintaining Firefox for outdated operating systems becomes costly for Mozilla and risky for users.”

Re:Wow!

By williamyf • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

you can now merge PDFs and add images to them

That’s quite amazing… …and not something that I’ve ever needed nor considered doing in a browser. I wonder if I’ll use it much.

You and me, not much.

  But considering the ammount of PDFs you find on the web nowadays, coupled with the ammount of people that use only a browser and no other SW, the venn diagram of that is a pretty large user base.

Throw into that people who have machines so underpowered that they can not run two apps at the same time if one of the Apps is a browser and another App is something as heavy as a full suite of PDF editing (I see plenty of these here in Venezuela), and this may be welcome by those as well.

I was sceptical about the base browser being able to display and edit PDFs all those years ago (and I still think this should have been managed by a plug-in, like widevine and OpenH264, even if the Plug-in was developed by Mozilla themselves), but native PDF rendering is here. Mozilla may as well keep developing it.

ESR

By markdavis • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

>“Why is being an ESR so important, you ask?”

I don’t need to ask :)

We use Firefox ESR at work as the most stable/predictable version for production use. It means we can focus on policies/config/testing on our machines (several hundred, all Linux) and sites, then roll it out and not have to worry about new “features” popping up that cause confusion for users, require additional training/support, or cause unexpected issues for a reasonable period of time (1 year). It is a good release model. Point updates to ESR are just bug fixes and security fixes, no feature or UI changes.

At home, my machines (all Linux) run the latest non-ESR versions.

Re:Wow!

By markdavis • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

PDF is not primarily a web function, that is true. But as you said, there is a HUGE overlap between PDF and interacting with web sites. The ability to fully handle PDF, including filling forms and editing them in the browser, is majorly convenient. So much so that I welcome all efforts for that in Firefox. Especially under Linux, where the FOSS options for simple PDF editing are not quite as numerous.

I, too, wouldn’t mind if it were a separate addon that was included/enabled by default and users could choose to remove it. But having that integrated as a non-addon doesn’t offend me much.... Even though I do think it would be better as an addon. Even so, it can currently be turned off/disabled if not wanted and isn’t huge.

Re:Wow!

By markdavis • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

>“FireFox IS NOT a frugal option for anything”

(Yet no less so than any other full, multi-platform browser)

>“but if on top of the non-frugal option of firefox you deploy the non-frugal option of full fat adobe acrobat PDF editing, well… you go non-frugal times two. Underpowered machines running on the edge would trip over that edge (pun intended)"

Bingo

A computer without a full browser is almost useless nowadays. A computer without a full PDF editing monster is still very useful and not uncommon at all.

But if you can slide in some of the most important PDF handling into an existing program that everyone will already have on their machine (a browser), with little resources added, then it is a big win. And that is exactly what Mozilla did.

Firefox Data Collection Still on by Default

By BrendaEM • Score: 3 Thread
Cares for my privacy? What about from you?

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They’re Free of AI Slop

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media:
As AI companies search for more training data to improve their models, one company is offering old, printed books as an ideal source because they are guaranteed to be free of the very AI slop AI companies are producing. “The world’s best AI training data is sitting on a shelf,” ISBNdb, a company that produces what it claims is “the world’s largest book database,” and that offers high-volume book acquisition services for AI companies, says on its site. “Books represent curated, peer-reviewed, domain-specific human knowledge, structured in a way no web crawl can replicate. Dense, edited, authoritative.”

In one article on its site, ISBNdb explains that printed books published before 2022 are ideal for AI training data because they don’t include AI generated text. As the article correctly notes, much of the data that AI companies can scrape from the internet today is likely to include AI generated text, which could result in “model collapse,” a process by which AI models that are trained on AI generated data results in worse models that are more prone to errors. The article also notes that book authors who object to their writing being scraped for training purposes can now easily poison AI models by producing writing designed to manipulate and sabotage the resulting AI models.

“Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage […] “Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools.” […] ISBNdb advertises that it can keep the identity of AI companies secret. “Strict NDA [non-disclosure agreement] on every engagement,” ISBNdb’s site says. “Every project begins with a legally binding non-disclosure agreement. Your identity, strategy, and acquisition targets are never disclosed.” ISBNdb notes that AI companies may not want to be caught destroying printed books during the scanning process. “The optics problem is real,” ISBNdb’s site says. "‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy.”

Rainbows End

By TwistedGreen • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Yeah, it’s happening.

Not the best idea

By CEC-P • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Every modern AI engine has trouble with versioning and outdated info being replaced with newer info. I’ve had multiple say “oh, that’s the new interface. It’s here now” about once a week. Scan books from like 1950 and you’ll probably get “There actually is no subatomic particle smaller than the proton” and “Actually, women shouldn’t work on office environments or their ovaries will explode.”

$3000 per book

By silentbozo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07…

“The payout will deliver $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works, shared among the authors and publishers who hold rights to them. While the settlement is believed to be the largest in the history of U.S. copyright law, many authors and creators still don’t view it as a win.

That’s because of how the legal question was resolved. Alsup sided with Anthropic on the core issue. He ruled that training an AI model on copyrighted text counts as fair use â" a decision widely seen as a turning point for the AI industry. But the ruling didn’t excuse how Anthropic obtained the books in the first place. Anthropic had built its training library from two sources: books it purchased and scanned (fine), and books it downloaded from pirate sites like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. Alsup found the second method illegal on its own terms and said that piracy question could go to trial; Anthropic agreed to a settlement soon after to avoid a trial and whatever damages a jury might have awarded.”

So… it’s legal to scan books you own and then use them to train LLMs, but it’s not legal to use scans that someone else made (I’ll assume in this case, they didn’t own the books in question.) Hence… the perverse incentive to buy and re-scan books that might already have been scanned… and the cheapest way of doing it is to chop the spine off.

“Internal Anthropic documents about its plan to scan millions of books, revealed in the copyright lawsuit, don’t make clear why the company wanted to destroy the books in the process. A deposition of Tom Harvey, who Anthropic hired to lead the project and who previously helped create Google Books, shows that one company Anthropic contracted to scan the books was Datamation, which offers both âoehigh volume destructive and non-destructive book scanningâ services. In a destructive book scanning process, the spine of the book is cut so the pages can be fed into a scanning machine, which is faster and cheaper than non-destructive book scanning.

Regardless of its original intentions, the federal judge in the copyright lawsuit from authors against Anthropic, William Alsup, found that Anthropic’s creation of digital copies of the books was legal specifically because the books were destroyed.

âoeHere, every purchased print copy was copied in order to save storage space and to enable searchability as a digital copy,â Alsup wrote in his ruling. âoeThe print original was destroyed. One replaced the other. And, there is no evidence that the new, digital copy was shown, shared, or sold outside the company.â "

Kind of fucked up that the scan can’t be shared (or donated). I imagine in most cases, good copies of these books no longer exist in libraries or in the Library of Congress. With current law, all books that are covered under copyright will eventually fall into the public domain, but this is meaningless unless copies exist for people to redistribute once that limit is reached. Essentially companies are exploiting the monopoly benefit extended through copyright without allowing society to benefit from the material falling into the public domain, which is the implicit contract to using state power to enforce copyright.

Ironically, destroying physical copies in order to comply with the 1:1 rule makes the remaining copies that much more valuable.

Oh the humanity!

By toxonix • Score: 4, Funny Thread

Someone’s going to feed it a hardcopy of “AI For Dummies” and THEN we’ll be sorry. The singularity will be upon us.

Re: Model collapse is a transient phenomenon

By gweihir • Score: 4, Informative Thread

You apparently have no understood what model collapse is. Here is a hint: It cannot be avoided. The first few papers about it already proved that.

Canonical Launches Enterprise Store For Ubuntu Pro

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
BrianFagioli writes:
Canonical has launched the Enterprise Store as part of Ubuntu Pro, giving organizations a way to manage Ubuntu software distribution in restricted networks, behind firewalls, and in air gapped environments. The on premises proxy sits between devices and Canonical software stores, allowing companies to cache downloads, control software revisions, and manage snaps and charms without requiring every system to connect directly to the internet. The Enterprise Store is designed for organizations with strict security requirements, including regulated industries and environments where predictable software updates and audit controls are important.

Is this new?

By Ubi_NL • Score: 3 Thread

I must admit i did not read the complete article, but how is this fundamentally different from running a local copy of a yum or apt repo? I’ve doing that for 20 years nowâ¦

Judge Approves $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement Over Pirated Books Used To Train Claude

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A federal judge has approved Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement over pirated books used to train its Claude chatbot, with authors and publishers set to receive about $3,000 per book. The case produced a mixed ruling for the AI industry: training on copyrighted books was found not to be illegal, but Anthropic’s use of pirated copies from shadow libraries was. The Associated Press reports:
District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers. About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment. Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was “the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

So Claude doesn’t have to unlearn what it stole?

By schwit1 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Proves the old adage that It’s cheaper to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Re: So Claude doesn’t have to unlearn what it stol

By cathector • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

^——- THIS
is the main take-away here.

it seems to me that the little blurb on most title pages like “cannot be reproduced by any means electronic or otherwise” would cover ai training, but it sounds like this ruling found otherwise.

Re: So Claude doesn’t have to unlearn what it sto

By drinkypoo • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Using a work for AI training is not reproduction. It’s not storing the works.

Creating the training corpus, on the other hand… That IS storing them, and completely as well.

Corporate Personhood test failed.

By Forty Two Tenfold • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Don’t “normal” pirates get prison sentence in front of fines/damages?

Re:Should be weighted

By allo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

That’s pre-Disney copyright.

AT&T Loses Key Ruling In Bid To Stop Offering Basic Phone Service In California

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A federal judge rejected AT&T’s request to temporarily block California rules requiring it to offer basic phone service to new customers in its wireline territory. AT&T wants to retire its copper-based phone network and stop service for nearly 200,000 California customers in 2027, but the state argues the company can meet its obligations with modern alternatives like fiber rather than abandoning Carrier of Last Resort requirements altogether. Ars Technica reports:
To win a preliminary injunction, AT&T had to show it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that California rules are preempted by a Federal Communications Commission order. US District Judge Linda Lopez denied AT&T’s request for a preliminary injunction during a motion hearing on Thursday, according to a docket entry. The case is in US District Court for the Southern District of California. […] AT&T could appeal Lopez’s ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and could appeal later if it loses the underlying case. But since it has not obtained the injunction it asked for, AT&T for now remains under California’s orders to keep offering phone service to potential customers while the case continues.

just becase…

By SumDog • Score: 4, Funny Thread
If I lived in California, I’d be tempted to get a physical, copper landline to be one of those remaining 200,000, just to piss AT&T off.

Want monopoly powers, no responsibilities.

By Frobnicator • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The laws are simple enough. The landline companies are given enormous public benefits, right-of-way access, monopoly access to customers, and more. They’re also told as a responsibility they must provide services to certain groups, a relatively small cost in comparison to the tremendous benefits.

They’re might quick to back out of the responsibilities when it has a tiny cost.

It would be interesting if the state were to counter-offer, yes they can cut off the few thousand customers, in exchange for being charged for every square inch of that is currently a free or low-cost easement for their cables, wires, boxes, conduits, poles, and towers, plus the adjacent ground cleared for them. And bills for billions of dollars in property repairs and damages done in the process, and an escrow account with funds to remove all the lines, conduits, poles, and towers when that eventual day comes.

Re:If we can’t have landlines

By CommunityMember • Score: 4, Informative Thread

We need to require that all cell phone towers be equipped with batteries and generators so they work when the power is out.

In California there is a requirement for 72 hours of backup power at the towers.

Re:Want monopoly powers, no responsibilities.

By drinkypoo • Score: 5, Informative Thread

The situation isn’t simple though.

The telcos also promised to bring last mile internet to the same POTS customers they are trying to abandon now. Remember Pacific Bell? They claimed they would have “lightspeed DSL” provided to ALL CUSTOMERS BY THE YEAR 2000. They took billions in taxpayer funds for this purpose and it never happened.

Then SBC bought them and took tens of billions more and it still never happened.

Then ATT bought them and took HUNDREDS of billions more and it STILL never happened.

It would be interesting if the state were to counter-offer, yes they can cut off the few thousand customers, in exchange for being charged for every square inch of that is currently a free or low-cost easement for their cables, wires, boxes, conduits, poles, and towers, plus the adjacent ground cleared for them.

There’s no way to retroactively charge them for that, but anything less would be unfair.

Re:just becase…

By dgatwood • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

I finally dropped service a couple of years ago because the service had crept up to something like $70 a month for a basic landline phone with Caller ID. I kind of feel like they’re laughing all the way to the bank either way.

Judge Pauses Paramount-Warner Bros Merger

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A federal judge has temporarily paused the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger after a 12-state coalition led by California argued the deal would violate antitrust law. The 14-day restraining order (PDF) preserves the status quo while the court considers a preliminary injunction, which could effectively determine whether the merger survives. Variety reports:
“Plaintiff States’ showing at least demonstrates that serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief,” the judge wrote, adding that Paramount has acknowledged it will not be harmed by the delay until the end of September. “Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace while they wait for the Court to adjudicate this case. The balance of equities, combined with the public’s vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief.”

The 12-state coalition, led by California, brought a motion for the temporary restraining order. The states are also seeking a preliminary injunction, which would block the merger until the judge rules on the merits of the states’ lawsuit. The 14-day restraining order could be extended to as long as 28 days. Martinez-Olguin, of the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California in Oakland, also set a hearing on the preliminary injunction for Aug. 3, though that date, too, could be delayed if the parties agree. Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, hailed the judge’s ruling as a “critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day.”
“History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans’ lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people,” Bonta said. “With our lawsuit, we’re fighting for a free and fair market and a thriving film and television industry that serves creatives and audiences alike. We have a full tank of gas, the law on our side, and look forward to continuing to make our case.”

Checks to SCOTUS and POTUS didn’t clear

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
I’m sure that they’ll get the bribes sorted out so the merger can proceed.

Meanwhile EA games is about to get hit with 20 billion dollars in debt from the Saudis buying it. Which I’m sure is just fine.

It sure would be nice if we had someone regulating the economy…

Re:Checks to SCOTUS and POTUS didn’t clear

By olsmeister • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
It’s only a 14 day delay, after which you can expect it to proceed as per plan. It’s probably more for optics than anything else.

More than one

By rufey • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

There is another lawsuit filed in Delaware. This one is concerning possible “side” deals that were made that would enrich the current POTUS at the expense of shareholders. Has to do with corporate governance more than anything.

It was filed by The Public Integrity Project. More info here. Also an interview with one of the lawyers who filed the suit

Re:From the regulatory point of view…

By Jason Earl • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

There is no next move. Netfilx was buying them for their back catalog. The part of WB that people care about is the part that makes new movies and television, and that part is dead no matter who purchases WB.

If you haven’t seen the tour of the Warner Brother’s lot, you should do that now. They are still even filming some shows there. My guess is that, no matter who owns it they will probably keep something open there as a museum, but the days of it functioning as a working studio are quickly coming to an end. Heck, they are already living in the past. Most of what they talk about when you visit the studio is shows that they stopped filming over 20 years ago.

Still, it is very interesting to see how shows like “Friends” and “Gilmore Girls” was filmed before computers could be used to create whatever shot you needed.

Re:Checks to SCOTUS and POTUS didn’t clear

By Aighearach • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Hey Dingus, the SCOTUS isn’t going to contact a lower judge and tell them in advance how to rule, it doesn’t work that way.

They would risk their life appointment by doing that, as they only serve in periods of “good behavior.”

Historically in the US almost all bribes given to judges are related to criminal cases involving organized crime, where it isn’t the money given that is persuasive, but rather the implied threat to their life if they don’t accept the bribe.

Nothing like that is going to happen here.

The most likely outcome is a Preliminary Injunction, and further hearings in the spring if the deal didn’t already self-destruct by then. Companies often prevail eventually in these processes, but not without going through the process. Deals with a self-destruct timer are often expected to fail by the people who installed that self-destruct. If you’re looking so hard for corruption, that’s the part of the process where you’re most likely to find it.

The Galaxy Card Is Samsung’s Answer To the Apple Card

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired:
Nearly seven years after Apple debuted the Apple Card, Samsung is following the iPhone maker’s footsteps with the Galaxy Card, aiming for its own slice of the credit card market. The announcement comes two days before Samsung’s second Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, where it’s expected to showcase new smartwatches and folding smartphones. The Galaxy Card is issued by Barclays on the Visa network; the Apple Card, originally issued by Goldman Sachs but now transitioning to Chase, is on the MasterCard network. There is a physical card — it’s not made of titanium but recycled steel.

The virtual card will be provisioned to a user’s Samsung Wallet account. With no annual fee, Samsung says cardmembers can earn 5 percent cash rewards on all in-store or online purchases made directly from Samsung in the US, 3 percent cash rewards on purchases made with the Galaxy Card using Samsung Wallet, 2 percent cash rewards on streaming service subscriptions, and 1 percent cash rewards on everything else with the physical card. The cash rewards can be redeemed as a statement credit or transferred to a checking or savings account. The annual percentage rate (APR) varies by cardmember, but the card has no foreign transaction fees. Other perks include a 20 percent discount on Samsung’s VIP Advantage membership, which offers extended device protection, specialized support, and exclusive deals, and $200 in cash rewards after spending $2,000 in the first 90 days.

Applications open up on July 22. The Samsung Wallet app is only available on Samsung smartphones and watches, so what happens if a consumer switches to a different smartphone brand? The company says Galaxy Card is not limited to Samsung device owners and that anyone can use the physical card, but you lose the key perks; the card can be managed through a BarclaysUS.com online portal. (Similarly, if an iPhone owner switches to Android, their physical Apple Card will still work, but they lose access to the Apple Wallet app and the 3 percent daily cash perk on Apple purchases; there’s a web portal to manage the account.)

Re:the sweet sweet middle man

By blackomegax • Score: 4, Informative Thread
The apple card is pretty great. Solid titanium “cool” card to whip out. An app with incredibly tight design and integration and spending awareness info. Never get anything like that from a bank..

Re:the sweet sweet middle man

By ZERO1ZERO • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
I don’t know if you are being sarcastic but your moderation suggests sincereity. What you describe is defacto in europe. We have credit cards on our phones, with notifications, history, control, etc. It’s just normal.

Eco System

By EnsilZah • Score: 3 Thread

Maybe it’s just me but when I think of Samsung I don’t think of a brand that has an eco-system, I just think of a generic company that usually makes decent quality hardware. I don’t want to use their app store, or their attempt at a personal AI assistant, or their password manager. I don’t expect innovation, I don’t care about their flagship products, I’m just content with using their hardware with no interaction with the company whatsoever.