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Post by CdnPhoto on Dec 15, 2023 17:18:27 GMT -8
7Seventh straight positive week. Keep going Santa! We had a great week, with a new ATH, and two ATH Closes. That said, we ended the week with this interesting Bloomberg article
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Dec 15, 2023 21:26:59 GMT -8
A bit of humor, at the expense of a cybertruck. Calif. park supervisor offers to educate Tesla Cybertruck drivers after bungled off-road attemptLooks like they went off the trail a bit, and then had to be winched out. It's easy to poke fun. But even without bad equipment (sounds likely they didn't have good tires for the conditions), certain conditions are unfriendly. We hit that last year once, when there were multiple cars that slide into each other at the ski resort. Even with thick Blizzaks, known as the snow tire benchmark, we started sliding backwards down towards a tesla. In some cases studded tires are better, and maybe in that case they would have been. Still, it looks closer to a person and vehicle not ready for the conditions. And maybe we haven't all been there, but a lot of us have at one point or another. For me, it was a rental Pontiac Vibe, and a shortcut thru the sand at a Florida beach. So I try to stop for people as long as it is safe, and remember that I've messed up a few times too. FWIW, though the textbook answer when spinning the tires and not going anywhere is to stop spinning your tires due to the the difference in standing friction vs moving friction from Physics, It's really tempting to keep them spinning if you're moving slightly in the right direction. I did this on the last day the ski resort was open in 2020, closing due to covid worries. I was moving along fine but lost momentum when someone in front lost it. The snow was just right, or just wrong, to just not have traction. After turning around and making a second attempt, I could feel I was spinning but I was inching forward, like AAPL on a day it only gains pennies. I probably could have regained better traction if I had just let off, but others went in the shoulder and had good grip, so I followed them...and parked about 100 yards from there. Oh well. Maybe the best solution is studdless tires that can have studs pop out when needed. I think there was a solution like that, 5 years back, similar to those kids trucks that could deploy claws from their tires. Until then, maybe there will be an option like local school buses have, where when they don't have chains on full time they can deploy a spinning star of chain links that go under the tire, perfect for those strange shoulder season conditions or the time where you only need a little extra help in the upper neighborhoods. If I remember right Apple got a patent a few years back on under vehicle cameras to detect driving conditions. Hopefully those do a good job, since many vehicles don't seem to automagically detect it through feedback, and instead need a setting selected.
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JDSoCal
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Aspiring oligarch
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Post by JDSoCal on Dec 16, 2023 7:52:27 GMT -8
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Ted
fire starter
Posts: 882
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Post by Ted on Dec 16, 2023 9:15:31 GMT -8
Hmm, JD's view here seems to be oversimplifying the predicament Apple and other tech companies place themselves in due to storing user data. Apple certainly wants and needs to be seen complying with the law. In the past Apple gave law enforcement certain data when presented with a legitimate subpoena. Now though Apple is taking a harder line requiring actual search warrants before releasing any info. While Tim could've been more resistant to these legal requests initially, I wouldn't call this a "real black eye" or particularly hypocritical on Apple's part. I applaud this change in policy and firmer stance in protecting our data, but I don't see any articles berating Apple for being cooperative with the American legal system in the past. For more depth on this read: www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/technology/apple-google-leak-investigation-data-requests.html
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JDSoCal
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Aspiring oligarch
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Post by JDSoCal on Dec 18, 2023 9:29:31 GMT -8
Echo chamber.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Dec 18, 2023 12:23:23 GMT -8
Is it possible that you see this issue as more black and white, instead of having a lot of grey area? I tend to think Apple mostly does the right thing, but no person or company is always right. One easy example of this is the backdating of stock options, where my understanding of it is that they could have legally backdated them as long as they were upfront about it. They messed up, though most people stayed out of legal trouble. But they could have easily stayed out of trouble, either by not backdating them (and giving more if needing to make an equal perceived incentive), or by specifically calling out the backdating (though maybe this would cause some extra tax issues). Not being in the legal arena, I'd think that a subpoena would be sufficient, and that the change was probably made due to someone misusing/overusing it, or another country using it as an example of what they want. But that's just wild guesses, coupled with the recent speculation included in that article about foreign governments asking for data. You are right in general, that it is easy to get a little lazy in following a company that you feel relatively safe with, whether that is with something like privacy, or even just good new upgrades and designs. I tend to think it is good for any company to have the CI mindset, the Constant Improvement. Even back at Motorola, while they didn't use those words they had a company saying they posted (on paper!) around, of "If it's not broke, fix it!". If you are happier now with the current restrictions Apple has, and think they at least had some restrictions before, then I'd tend to think they were doing ok then but even better now. But that gets into the societal question about doubting, relabeling, or rejudging the past, based on our knowledge or common practice of today. There's a ton of hot topic issues there, resulting in renaming streets and removing statues, but a less controversial comparison would be if with today's knowledge and practices we would blacken the records of doctors of the past who used leeches for blood letting. But again, I'm not in the legal field, so I don't know how big of a hole only requiring a subpoena in the past was. To me it is not as obvious, whereas stories of different modes of self driving on a Tesla, where it is allowed to speed or roll through a stop sign, seem much more worrisome.
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mark
fire starter
Posts: 1,554
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Post by mark on Dec 18, 2023 14:56:29 GMT -8
If I had to guess, I would say this is less about malice than about something else (perhaps a level of incompetence on Apple's part). If anything, it is more likely malice by government. I suspect that the numbers of subpoenas were very low and Apple routinely answered them with the information requested. After all, it's mostly metadata since Apple doesn't store most cleartext data of these kinds of things. What may have happened is that government (all sorts, federal and state) started submitting more and more subpoenas. Finally Apple said enough is enough and is now requiring a true search warrant. Of course the FISA extensions from the Patriot Act were just renewed with nary a whimper from anyone, even from libertarian organizations. So the Federal government getting a search warrant is substantially easier than it used to be.
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