A Lovely 10C Site!

Waugh and Basecamp didn't think that rule applied. Hey does cost $99 a year, but users can't sign up or pay within the iOS app. It's an app for using an existing outside service, just like Basecamp's eponymous platform — and Netflix and Slack and countless other apps. "So we were like, OK, maybe we just got the Monday morning reviewer," Basecamp co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson said. Lots of developers over the years have found that their app-review luck sometimes depended on who happened to be looking, and whether they'd had coffee yet. So Basecamp fixed more bugs, submitted a new version — 1.0.2 — and hoped for the best.

The app sat in the queue for review, then in the "under review" status for far longer than usual. Then Waugh got a phone call. The Apple reviewer said he was calling because the new app hadn't resolved the issue with rule 3.1.1. The issue had been escalated internally, and Apple had determined it was a valid rejection — the only way to move forward would be to implement Apple's payments system. And not only that: Waugh was told that Apple would like a commitment and a timeline for implementing the payment system, or Apple might be forced to remove Hey from the App Store entirely.

When Waugh and Basecamp pointed out that there were many other apps — even email apps like Spark or Edison — that allowed users to log in to their existing accounts without signing up through Apple, the reviewer told them they wouldn't discuss other apps. And that was that.

Folks, this is one of the many reasons why I haven't brought an Apple product in years now. This is such bullshit right here.

What timing too as they're officially investigated by the EU:

As Heinemeier Hansson pointed out to me, it's bold timing for Apple to take such a strong stance. On Tuesday, the EU announced it is opening two antitrust probes into Apple's App Store dealings, looking into the way Apple uses its platform to squash competitors. Spotify has been complaining for years about Apple's App Store tax, its feature restrictions and more. On Tuesday, Kobo joined the complaint, calling it anticompetitive for Apple to both operate its own book store and to charge a 30% commission on all books Kobo sold on Apple devices. "Apple's anticompetitive behavior has intentionally disadvantaged competitors," Spotify said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, "created an unlevel playing field, and deprived consumers of meaningful choice for far too long."

Throughout the ’90s, Microsoft maintained DOS-based Windows along with NT to serve those who were still dependent on legacy MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows software. Microsoft was eager to transition to NT for all, but the system requirements for a reasonably useful Windows NT machine far exceeded what most consumers had at home.

By the late ’90s, many consumer PCs were finally powerful enough to run Windows NT, so they became ripe targets for potential Windows 2000 installations. Some at Microsoft hoped Windows 2000 would be the transition point for consumer Windows to become NT. However, Microsoft decided to hold off until Windows XP in 2001.

This made many who used Windows 2000 feel that much cooler for getting a taste of a stable Windows operating system ahead of time.

Enter Windows 2000, which ran with rock-solid stability on the very same hardware most people used with Windows 98. At the time, being able to leave a computer running without it crashing, and not having to reboot after installing software seemed like a miracle. In fact, Microsoft included “Dramatically Reduced Reboot Scenarios” as one of the primary selling features of Windows 2000 on its website back in 2000.

Windows 2000 is one of my fav OS of all time due to it's stability and simplicity at the time, now in it's 20th birthday. Such great memories!

The Supreme Court on Monday issued its most sweeping decision ever to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, finding that a federal ban on sex discrimination in workplaces also protects employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."

"Our work is not done. There are still alarming gaps in federal civil rights laws that leave people — particularly Black and Brown LGBTQ people — open to discrimination in businesses open to the public and taxpayer-funded programs," James Esseks, director the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement.

"Congress must affirm today’s decision and update our laws to ensure comprehensive and explicit protections for LGBTQ people and all people who face discrimination."

This is a huge win for LGBTQ people in America when they need it. Rest assured though, the fight for their right to exist is still only the beginning.

Perhaps in response, today the Internet Archive announced it was closing the National Emergency Library two weeks early. Founder Brewster Kahle wrote that he hoped the plaintiffs would "call off their costly assault."

If the court finds that Internet Archive "willfully" infringed copyright, the library could be on the hook for up to $150,000 in damages—per each of the 1.4 million titles. (You do the math.)

Many are preparing for the worst, a complete shutdown, but doing so is no easy feat. Many open-Internet activists have been discussing how to back up the archive and make it more resilient for years. The temptation would be to employ a distributed system, such as a blockchain, that would be censorship-resistant and couldn’t be legally shut down. Yet the amount of data makes any attempt at backing up the archive difficult.

If people are smart, it's time to archive the Archive right now. In other words, fork it and turn it unto a decentralized platform. I hope someone out there is working on that. Plus you have to think libraries need some decentralization as well as this lawsuit could kill libraries as we know them.

Chinese officials reached out to Zoom in May and early June about four videoconference calls that were publicized on social media to commemorate Tiananmen Square protests, the San Jose, California-based company said Thursday in a blog post. Zoom said that China “demanded” the company terminate the meetings and host accounts because of the activity, which it deemed illegal.

Zoom said that at least three of the four meetings contained participants from mainland China, and it made the decision to end three of the meetings and terminate the associated accounts, two in the U.S. and one belonging to an activist in Hong Kong. “Going forward Zoom will not allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China,” the company said.

Zoom announced Wednesday it had reinstated the closed U.S. accounts, and said it was working on technology that could prevent participants from specific countries from joining calls that were deemed illegal in those areas. The company will also outline a new policy to address these types on requests on June 30.

This is yet another reason why you should stay away from Zoom and just use Jitsi or p2pchat.

The new SGX attacks are known as SGAxe and CrossTalk. Both break into the fortified CPU region using separate side-channel attacks, a class of hack that infers sensitive data by measuring timing differences, power consumption, electromagnetic radiation, sound, or other information from the systems that store it. The assumptions for both attacks are roughly the same. An attacker has already broken the security of the target machine through a software exploit or a malicious virtual machine that compromises the integrity of the system. While that’s a tall bar, it’s precisely the scenario that SGX is supposed to defend against.

Yikes, Intel in trouble with their CPUs again.

The original story on how this came about is here:

And now to the article:

Unsurprisingly, the savvy, computer history-minded readers of Ars Technica took this proclaimed rarity as a challenge, and a new user signed up to comment on the article with an intriguing image upload: an apparent copy of SimRefinery on a single 3.5-inch disk, labeled only with the game's title in Times New Roman and a black-and-white Maxis logo. The anonymous user, who goes by the username "postbebop" and has so far not replied to our requests for comment, credited the disk to a "retired chemical engineering friend" who had work experience at Chevron in the early '90s.

After teasing a plan to recover the disk's contents and upload them to archive.org, postbebop went silent. Until today!

The anonymous Ars user returned to our comments section on Thursday to confirm that they'd uploaded the disk's contents, after an apparently annoying extraction process, to archive.org for everyone in the world to download and play. The above gallery is a peek at how the incomplete prototype version of the game functions as emulated using DOSBox. While that archive.org link will let interested users play the prototype in any Web browser, the full game download also includes an intro.bat file; booting that with an application like DOSBox will play a pre-recorded demo of how the game is meant to function. This demo has a few explanatory prompts, but it also has long, unexplained pauses, perhaps meant for a live demonstration by MBS staffers to interested Chevron managers.

Wow! This is quite awesome to see that a protoype version of th egame is playable.

Also here's a great analysis on the game itself!

Vintage is “another word for dropping support,” Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association, told me in an email. Gordon-Byrne said that most manufacturers designate an “end of service life” date, and that five years is “not particularly nefarious while clearly forcing consumers into new purchases.” Apple says that it loses money on device repair, so it makes sense that the company wouldn’t be incentivized to offer repair service for products that are long past warranty.

Sara Behdad, an associate professor at the University of Florida whose studies the life cycle of electronics and e-waste management, said that the cost of maintaining the supply chains needed to produce parts for vintage and obsolete models is likely “the main reason to dissuade [Apple] from offering repair services.”

“Even if they want to offer repair services, if the product was sold five years ago, it’s not cost-efficient for them to really have all the parts available,” Behdad said.

Apple declined to comment on the record for this story.

This is more of a reason to switch to a Windows or Linux computer. It can last for up to 10-15 years instead of 5-7 on Macs. Plus Apple's anti-repair stance really makes me sick.

LEGO has gone above and beyond most companies by not only advocating for the Black Lives Matter movement but also donating $4 million to organizations that are supporting the movement. The Black Lives Matter movement had a resurgence after George Floyd died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Across the film and entertainment industries, individuals and companies are using their platforms to speak out. As an example, Disney-owned Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm issued statements in support of those protesting for justice for George Floyd.

I'm so glad that LEGO is taking massive action by giving away $4 million to help black communities.

Looking ahead, the most dangerous thing about the Report may be that some Senators are treating its recommendations for “clarification” as an invitation to rewrite Section 512, inviting the exact legal uncertainty the law was intended to eliminate. Senators Thom Tillis and Patrick Leahy have asked the Office to provide detailed recommendations for how to rewrite the statute – including asking what it would do if it were starting from scratch.

Based on the report, we suspect the answer won’t include strong protections for user rights.

The US could be on the road to a Article 17-like Copyright Directive and this would be the first step towards that goal which is bad news for everyone but the richest people.

33mhz.10centuries.com. Internet Users of All Kinds Should Be Concerned by a New Copyright Office Report