Saw this posted on !technology@lemmy.ml and thought ideal to crosspost here too

At the end of Q2 2023, Backblaze was monitoring 245,757 hard drives and SSDs in our data centers around the world. Of that number, 4,460 are boot drives, with 3,144 being SSDs and 1,316 being HDDs.

This graph looks at the annual failure rate for drives more than 5 years old. The higher capacity ones look a little bit concerning IMO. This is discussed within a short section later on in the blog post.

Following another setback in its legal dispute with Sony Music, Quad9 has decided to block pirate site Canna worldwide. The court-ordered block was initially restricted to Germany but the music label complained that VPNs and a mobile network still allowed Germans to access the pirate site. Quad9, meanwhile, has appealed the underlying court judgment.

Ultimately, Quad9 hopes that the lower court’s blocking order will be overturned on appeal. It will continue to fight the case, even if that takes several years.

This sets a really bad precedent going forward... a bit of a low blow for Sony to go after a non-profit that doesn't have an army of lawyers

Links:

YouTube/Invidious/Piped link in description

The IAA considers privacy enthusiasts and users who block ads to be extremist.

They also criticise Apple's decision to give users the option to opt out of 3rd party tracking in apps. I'm not sure if the IAA realises advertising can still exist without tracking being a part of it!

Synopsis

In this video Louis reads the transcript of a meeting held by the International Advertising Association back in January this year.

YouTube/Invidious/Piped link in comments

Reddit's infamous ModCodeOfConduct has reopened the r/OpenAI community, calling for new moderators.

Just like with the r/HomeAutomation takeover 2 weeks ago, it seems Reddit has yeeted out all the old mods regardless of their stance.

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Louis has been recieving emails showing a general dislike towards electric mobility, primarily due to the restrictions on how freely people can work on and operate these machines.

In this video he makes the point that electric mobility isn't the problem - companies are choosing to make these machines restrictive.

The primary example cited is VanMoof, an e-bike company that has folded, leaving most users unable to unlock their bicycle or transfer ownership. Unlocking the bicycle usually requires an app & key stored on VanMoof servers. A rival company "Cowboy" released an app that extracts the bike key from VanMoof servers, so owners can continue using their bike until it breaks down.

He makes the comparison to his own ebike built using off-the-shelf parts, choosing products that gave the most autonomy to the buyer. He designed his bicycle to be able to keep up with New York traffic speeds, something that many prebuilt ones cannot do due to either an underpowered motor or speed limiter.

Some criticisms are raised towards prebuilt e-bikes that use speed limiters and proprietary technologies - personally I see no problems with restrictions as long as they can be bypassed with sufficient technical skill, however that can become a slippery slope where artificial limits get normalised, possibly reaching a point where bypassing them is no longer feasible (such as unlocking the bootloader on a modern Android device).

YouTube/Invidious (Piped link in comments by bot)

Steam dropping support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 means users who purchased games for their PC during that era are SOL if their machine is not capable of running the latest Windows.

Synopsis

In the video, Louis reads a discussion thread between a Steam customer and their support team regarding older Windows versions being dropped. The customer is admittedly a bit salty in their writing. Steam doesn't directly answer the customer's questions, and instead points the customer to Steam's existing statements made about dropping support for older Windows versions.

Louis makes the argument that even though he agrees with Steam's stance on things such as piracy and their general consumer-oriented attitude, if we are dependent on Steam to launch games, especially on older systems where we can't unplug the ethernet and be able to still launch the game, do we really own the game to begin with?

Commenter views

Some commenters mentioned that this is a Chrome issue, as Steam's interface itself is a web browser and if Chromium drops support for older systems, Steam is stuck.

Other commenters mentioned it's a Microsoft issue, as more issues surface in unsupported Windows versions, it would be in Steam's best interests to drop support for these.

Another one mentioned that the DMCA provides an exemption for cracking games that you already own, if it is no longer being supported.

Links

What's your take on this?

Youtube/Invidious (A piped link should be posted by a bot below)

Brave Browser has started running "Block this ad" ads on Youtube, following a recent change where Youtube is blocking users that use an adblocker.

Pretty ballsy move by Brave IMO.

Louis has switched over to Brave for unrelated reasons, which was interesting to know! Personally I'll be sticking with Firefox.

YouTube/Invidious

It's unsurprising but disappointing that most authorised repair places are bound by policies that kind-of force customers to purchase a new device, especially in cases where their existing faulty device can be repaired on the spot for little cost.

I'm happy this repair shop owner (who decided to stay anonymous, for obvious reasons) carried out the minor repair for the customer despite Samsung not allowing this.

There's some people in the comments also talking about times where they carried out minor repairs for customers in situations where their company policy would have forced an expensive and unnecessary parts replacement.

Right to repair should create more repair options for consumers, leading to a reduction of expensive parts swaps in cases where they aren't necessary IMO

YouTube/Invidious

I don't understand this attitude at all... Some people are better off staying on Reddit IMO

As far as I'm aware it's always been possible to bypass an iCloud activation lock (by directly interfacing with the flash storage) - however now the barrier for entry is so much lower with online services offering activation lock removal with a quick turnaround time.

Louis goes into much more detail in the video, however it's likely an insider at Apple doing this.

My main takeaways are: It's unlikely Apple is going to do anything about this, since these stolen & reset devices are bringing more users into the Apple ecosystem, as well as driving AppleCare sales (theft cover) and purchases of new devices. Also, since no user data is exposed, they aren't necessarily at risk of bad press, since the privacy of the original owner is not compromised.

Do you think Apple will fix the process flaw allowing an insider to unlock these devices with no consequences?

YouTube/Invidious

Edit: Fix typos

YouTube/Invidious

This is an interesting take from Louis.

I can't say I fully agree with his view on the moderators blacking out subreddits though - from my perspective, although the users are the primary contributors to the subreddit, the moderators are the ones who curate the community into what it is, keeping spam out and making it an inviting space for everyone.

While it is unfair for regular users to be locked out of their communities due to the blackout, I believe the mods have every right to do so. Some/most of the subreddits participating held a vote in which community members wanted their subreddit to join the blackout too, where those mods could have decided to not allow a vote to begin with.

Personal opinions aside, the rest of the video is informative, but unfortunate. I really am curious as to how Reddit's IPO will go