This is exactly what CloudFlare and Google have been doing for a while. i meet so many tech illiterate people who "can't log in to the internet" because of some discouraging CAPTCHA or because Gmail decided that even though they knew their passwords, a phone number they haven't used in 2 years (and has probably been reallocated to someone else) is a better proof of identity.
It's a shame it's even legal to discriminate people's browsers based on shady stats and not actual abuse.
Because HN loves to complain about this, I get to repeat it as always. Enroll a real 2fa (totp, security key, passkey) on your account and you will not face any of these issues. There's a reason they do this for insecure accounts and an easy way to avoid it.
I've logged into years-dormant Gmail accounts, from small towns in Mexico on a $2usd Mexican SIM and google has not even batted an eye.
It would be really awesome if Google would kindly tell them so they could have an opportunity to fix the issue and reactivate their account, instead of hard-locking them out with no recourse.
It's not like people are encouraged to keep their valuable data with these companies, only to lose the ai-fraud-detection lottery.
That's very unlikely. If you talk to anyone working in a public library or a local non-profit assisting elderly/homeless people, you will notice these issues are systemic and not isolated cases. From the cases i would see first hand, nothing would suggest that they had been compromised in any way.
“Officially” is meaningless here. The blocking exists, and it is at the direction or under the control of their government.
They are yet same thing. You know, if it looks like a duck.
This is standard operating procedure for the communist party. They rarely say any kind of topics or activities are banned outright. It’s just that if you say the wrong things in the wrong place, a bunch of plainclothes police will come to your home in the middle of the night.
Because Meta and Google are weaponized by a dictatorship?
How can people really be so blind to the enormous threat posed by allowing hostile dictatorships unfettered access to our eyeballs and devices within our own borders.
Both Meta and Google have deep, well established ties to the US intelligence and military. So yes, they have been weaponized. Just by whatever the hell kind of oligarchy/plutarchy/neo-reactionary shitshow the US is turning into, and not a dictatorship per se, yet.
I wouldn’t call most of those Amazon, FB, YouTube etc, people the actual smart people either. They’re mostly just lucky. What made Facebook or YouTube successful over any other competitor? Just luck that their design turned out to be the one people like more?
They mistakenly think their success is due to how skilled or smart they are they think they’re hot shit and their thoughts are gold. But most of them are just like Elon Musk: average intelligence people who got lucky enough to climb to the top of the pile.
The same is true for most software people. We think we’re super smart because we have logical thinking and understand a complicated thing that most people don’t, but then you can always get a good laugh reading the HN crowd try to talk smart on other subjects like physics / quantum mechanics.
A ton of skill, talent, adaptability, and mountains of hard work are still prerequisites for "getting lucky" in that way though. Just because luck plays a big role doesn't make it the only factor.
> The same is true for most software people. We think we’re super smart because we have logical thinking and understand a complicated thing that most people don’t, but then you can always get a good laugh reading the HN crowd try to talk smart on other subjects like physics / quantum mechanics.
Talking out your ass about subjects you don’t understand isn’t limit to software people. It’s funny you mentioned physics because really smart physicists would frequently spew all kinds of stupidity about software when I was in grad school.
Not all physicists. Some are pretty chill. In fact a physicist I worked with was the one who clued me in to the whole "lots of physicists think they know everything" joke/not-a-joke thing, he thought the whole situation was very funny.
It is your right and I think courts in most countries agree.
The legality of publishing (and profiting from) ad-blocking software and what companies are allowed to do in order to interfere with ad-blocking is less clear.
But one thing for sure, while ad-blocking is your right, companies certainly don't have to make it easy.
Once again, per Jamie Kellner, your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots, otherwise you're stealing programming.
Sure, and generally, those are performed either in the same app or one at a time. All of those are also doable in 6GB of memory (iPhones and iPads are great for it).
"For iMovie for macOS, you can edit and share 4K video on Mac computers from 2011 or later with at least 4GB of memory." [0]
I think a lot of people over-purchase with Apple devices because they're not sure what the hardware specs mean and end up generalizing to cost. "Well, I /use/ my computer (for photos, video, etc) and that seems like it'd require more, so I probably shouldn't buy lowest tier... What's the next one up that I can afford?"
In the end, they feel good about their choice for being "just right", even though all of the options would have been.
I live in the SF Bay Area and know tons of people; and almost everyone is in tech.
I know exactly 2 people that program on their personal laptop, and one that does photo editing.
For everyone else it's a glorified Chrome or Safari browser. They almost all have whatever affordable Macbook they got the last time they needed a new laptop.
The only people I've ever heard complain about their laptops were non-Macbook users.
Yeah, everyone I know uses their MacBooks for work, coding, music, music and video editing, photo editing, some games, some doing AI/ML (though this is currently the minority), lots of crappy Electron apps like MS Teams, Slack, Spotify, 1Password, Chrome etc…
