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“Temporary” disk formatting UI from 1994 still lives on in Windows 11

Ars Technica - 25 maart 2024 - 5:39pm
If you've formatted a disk in Windows in the last 30 years, you may have come across this dialog box.

Enlarge / If you've formatted a disk in Windows in the last 30 years, you may have come across this dialog box. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Windows 11 has done a lot to update and modernize long-neglected parts of Windows' user interface, including many Settings menus and venerable apps like Notepad and Paint. But if you dig deep enough, you'll still find parts of the user interface that look and work like they did in the mid-'90s, either for compatibility reasons or because no one ever thought to go back and update them.

Former Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer shared some history about one of those finely aged bits: the Format dialogue box, which is still used in fully updated Windows 11 installs to this day when you format a disk using Windows Explorer.

Plummer says he wrote the Format dialog in late 1994, when the team was busy porting the user interface from the consumer-focused Windows 95 (released in mid-1995) to the more-stable but more resource-intensive Windows NT (NT 4.0, released in mid-1996, was the first to use the 95-style UI).

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Apple, Google, and Meta are failing DMA compliance, EU suspects

Ars Technica - 25 maart 2024 - 5:04pm
EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton talks to media about non-compliance investigations against Google, Apple, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Enlarge / EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton talks to media about non-compliance investigations against Google, Apple, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). (credit: Thierry Monasse / Contributor | Getty Images News)

Not even three weeks after the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) took effect, the European Commission (EC) announced Monday that it is already probing three out of six gatekeepers—Apple, Google, and Meta—for suspected non-compliance.

Apple will need to prove that changes to its app store and existing user options to swap out default settings easily are sufficient to comply with the DMA.

Similarly, Google's app store rules will be probed, as well as any potentially shady practices unfairly preferencing its own services—like Google Shopping and Hotels—in search results.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the philosophy of self, identity, and memory

Ars Technica - 25 maart 2024 - 3:14pm
<em>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</em> stars Jim Carrey in one of his most powerful dramatic roles.

Enlarge / Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stars Jim Carrey in one of his most powerful dramatic roles. (credit: Focus Features)

Last week, the 2004 cult classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind marked its 20th anniversary, prompting many people to revisit the surreal sci-fi psychological drama about two ex-lovers who erase their memories of each other—only to find themselves falling in love all over again. Eternal Sunshine was a box office success and earned almost universal praise upon its release. It's still a critical favorite today and remains one of star Jim Carrey's most powerful and emotionally resonant dramatic roles. What better time for a rewatch and in-depth discussion of the film's themes of memory, personal identity, love, and loss?

(Spoilers for the 2004 film below.)

Director Michel Gondry and co-writer Pierre Bismuth first came up with the concept for the film in 1998, based on a conversation Bismuth had with a female friend who, when he asked, said she would absolutely erase her boyfriend from her memory if she could. They brought on Charlie Kaufman to write the script, and the three men went on to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for their efforts. The title alludes to a 1717 poem by Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard," based on the tragic love between medieval philosopher Peter Abelard and Héloïse d'Argenteuil and their differing perspectives on what happened between them when they exchanged letters later in life. These are the most relevant lines:

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SUNY-Fredonia does indeed axe philosophy and a dozen other programs

Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog - 25 maart 2024 - 3:09pm
Here. [Link fixed] As we noted previously, this will surely be an issue in Professor Kershnar's lawsuit (i.e., that this was a stealth way of violating his First Amendment rights). (Thanks to Brock Sides for the pointer.) Brian Leiter

Here’s our comprehensive, in-depth guide to viewing the total solar eclipse

Ars Technica - 25 maart 2024 - 2:32pm
The path of totality for the April 8 eclipse.

Enlarge / The path of totality for the April 8 eclipse. (credit: National Solar Observatory)

If you enter "how to see the eclipse" into your favorite search engine, you're bound to see thousands—millions?—of helpful guides. Some of these are extremely detailed and thorough, almost as if the author were getting paid by the word or augmented by AI.

In reality, seeing a solar eclipse is just about the easiest thing one can do in one's life. Like, it's difficult to think of anything else that has the greatest reward-lowest effort ratio in life. You just need to know a couple of things. For the sake of simplicity, here is Ars' four-step guide to having a four-star eclipse-viewing experience. Steps are listed in order of ascending importance.

Step 1: Identify the path of totality. This is where the total solar eclipse will be visible on April 8. The National Solar Observatory has a good map here. Click on the map to get exact timing. It's time and place sorted.

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I'd settle for this as an epitaph

Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog - 25 maart 2024 - 1:40pm
I've been fortunate over the last few years to have a steady ally on issues pertaining to academic freedom, and UChicago's Kalven Report, in the eminent biologist Jerry Coyne, now emeritus here. A propos a recent misrepresentation of the Kalven... Brian Leiter

In Memoriam: John F. Malcolm (1930-2023)

Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog - 25 maart 2024 - 1:06pm
Professor Malcolm, a longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of California at Davis, where he was emeritus, died in September 2023. A scholar of ancient philosophy, he was best-known for his work on Plato. The UC... Brian Leiter

Elon Musk’s improbable path to making X an “everything app”

Ars Technica - 25 maart 2024 - 12:00pm
Elon Musk’s improbable path to making X an “everything app”

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | NurPhoto / Getty Images)

X used to be called Twitter, but soon it will become "the Everything App," and that day is "closer than everyone thinks," X CEO Linda Yaccarino promised in one of her first X posts of 2024.

"Nothing can slow us down," Yaccarino said.

Turning Twitter into an everything app is arguably the reason that Elon Musk purchased Twitter. He openly craved the success of the Chinese everything app WeChat, telling Twitter staff soon after purchasing the app that "you basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, and I think if we can achieve that, or even get close to that at Twitter, it would be an immense success,” The Guardian reported.

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Akrasia in The Guardian

Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog - 25 maart 2024 - 11:50am
A rather substantial piece. (Thanks to Eric Wolf for the pointer.) Brian Leiter

The Evolution of Animation, 1833–2017

Open Culture - 25 maart 2024 - 10:00am

This year has given us occasion to revisit the 1928 Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie, what with its entry — and thus, that of an early version of a certain Mickey Mouse — into the public domain. Though it may look comparatively primitive today, that eight-minute black-and-white film actually represents a great many advancements in the art and technology of animation since its inception. You can get a sense of that entire process, just about, from the video above, “The Evolution of Animation 1833–2017,” which ends up at The LEGO Batman Movie but begins with the humble phenakistiscope.

First introduced to the public in 1833, the phenakistiscope is an illustrated disc that, when spun, creates the illusion of motion. Essentially a novelty designed to create an optical illusion (the Greek roots of its name being phenakizein, or “deceiving,” and óps, or “eye”), it seems to have attained great popularity as a children’s toy in the nineteenth century, and it later became capable of projection and gained utility in scientific research. Pioneering motion photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope, now immortalized in cinema history as a predecessor of the movie projector, was based on the phenakistiscope.

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The first moments of “The Evolution of Animation” include a couple of phenakistiscopes, but soon the compilation moves on to clips starring somewhat better-known figures from the early twentieth century like Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur. But it’s only after Steamboat Willie that animation undergoes its real creative explosion, bringing to whimsical and hyperkinetic life not just human characters but a host of animals, trees, and non-living objects besides. After releasing the monumental Snow White in 1937, Disney dominated the form both technologically and artistically for at least three decades. Though this video does contain plenty of Disney, it also includes the work of other studios that have explored quite different areas of the vast field of possibility in animation.

Take, for example, the psychedelic Beatles movie Yellow Submarine, the French-Czech surrealist science-fiction fable Fantastic Planet, the stop-motion between-holidays spectacle of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and of course, the depth and refinement of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, beginning with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (which came before the formation of the studio itself). From the mid-nineties — with certain notable exceptions, like Wallace & Gromit: The Movie and Charlie Kaufman’s AnomaLisa — computer-generated 3D animation more or less takes over from the traditional varieties. This has produced a number of features widely considered masterpieces, most of them from the now-Disney-owned Pixar. But after experiencing the history of the form in miniature, it’s tempting to hope that the next stage of the animation’s evolution will involve the rediscovery of its past.

Related content:

Behold the World’s Oldest Animation Made on a Vase in Iran 5,200 Years Ago

Gertie the Dinosaur: The Mother of all Cartoon Characters (1914)

Early Japanese Animations: The Origins of Anime (1917–1931)

The Animations That Changed Cinema: The Groundbreaking Legacies of Prince Achmed, Akira, The Iron Giant & More

The Beautiful Anarchy of the Earliest Animated Cartoons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Early Animations

Eadweard Muybridge’s Motion Photography Experiments from the 1870s Presented in 93 Animated Gifs

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

The Cult of the Criterion Collection: The Company Dedicated to Gathering & Distributing the Greatest Films from Around the World

Open Culture - 25 maart 2024 - 9:00am

There was a time, not so very long ago, when many Americans watching movies at home neither knew nor cared who directed those movies. Nor did they feel particularly comfortable with dialogue that sometimes came subtitled, or with the “black bars” that appeared below the frame. The considerable evolution of these audiences’ general relationship to film since then owes something to the adoption of widescreen televisions, but also to the Criterion Collection: the home-video brand that has been targeting its prestige releases of acclaimed films squarely at cinephiles — and even more so, at cinephiles with a collecting impulse — for four decades now.

“The company’s first release was a LaserDisc edition of Citizen Kane that included supplementary materials like a video essay and extensive liner notes on the provenance of the negative from which the restoration was made,” writes the New York Times’ Magazine’s Joshua Hunt in a recent piece on how Criterion became a (or perhaps the) cinematic tastemaker.

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“Next came King Kong, which featured the first ever audio-commentary track, inspired, as an afterthought, by the stories that the film scholar Ronald Haver told while supervising the tedious process of transferring the film from celluloid.”

With the coming of the more successful DVD format in the late nineteen-nineties, such audio-commentary tracks became a staple feature of video releases, Criterion or otherwise. They were a godsend to the cinephiles of my generation coming of age in that era, a kind of informal but intensive film school taught by not just expert scholars but, often, the auteurs themselves. “Some of the earliest were recorded by Martin Scorsese for the Taxi Driver and Raging Bull LaserDiscs, which helped cement his influence on an entire generation of young directors” — including a certain Wes Anderson, who would go on to record commentary tracks for the Criterion releases of his own pictures.

At this point, Criterion has “become the arbiter of what makes a great movie, more so than any Hollywood studio or awards ceremony.” It’s also amassed an unusually dedicated customer base, as explained in the Royal Ocean Film Society video “The Cult of the Criterion Collection.” “We’re at a point in film culture where brands are increasingly more popular than products,” says host Andrew Saladino, a self-confessed Criterion devotee. “More and more, it seems as though the films and the people who made them are secondary to the name and logo of the company behind them,” a phenomenon that Criterion — itself a kind of media universe — somehow both participates in and rises above.

“While studios and streaming services chase audiences by producing endless sequels and spinoffs,” writes Hunt, “Criterion has built a brand that audiences trust to lead them.” I can testify to its having led me to the work of auteurs from Chris Marker to Jacques Tati, Akira Kurosawa to Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Altman to Nicolas Roeg. Today, budding cinema enthusiasts can even benefit from the advice of famous directors and actors for navigating its now‑1,650-title-strong catalog through its “Criterion closet” video series. Recently, that closet has hosted the likes of Paul Giamatti, Willem Dafoe, and Wim Wenders, who pulls off the shelf a copy of his own Until the End of the World — which Criterion released, of course, in its nearly five-hour-long director’s cut. “I always think this is maybe the best thing I’ve done in my life,” he says, “but then again, who am I to judge?”

Related content:

The Art of Restoring Classic Films: Criterion Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitchcock Movies

Martin Scorsese Names His Top 10 Films in the Criterion Collection

Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Criterion Collection)

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Criterion Collection

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Criterion Collection

A Celebration of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cassettes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

Europese Commissie gaat AI-inzet van grote platforms aanpakken

IusMentis - 25 maart 2024 - 8:12am
assorted electric cablesPhoto by John Barkiple on Unsplash

De Commissie heeft op grond van de Digital Services Act (DSA) formeel verzoeken om informatie gestuurd naar de grote online zoekmachines en platforms, las ik in hun persbericht van vorige week. Het gaat om uitleg over hoe zij omgaan met de risico’s van generatieve AI, zoals zogenaamde ‘hallucinaties’ waarbij AI valse informatie verstrekt, de virale verspreiding van deepfakes, evenals de geautomatiseerde manipulatie van diensten dat kan kiezers misleiden.

Het is natuurlijk dat laatste dat de directe aanleiding is: de verkiezingen van het Europees Parlement komen eraan, en de vorige keer was er nogal wat ophef over politieke disinformatie op online platforms. Ook het Cambridge Analytica-schandaal heeft veel zorgen gegeven, met name de vraag of met microtargeting mensen gericht zouden kunnen worden beïnvloed (en AI maakt dat massaal mogelijk).

Nergens in de DSA staat expliciet dat je AI hallucinaties, deepfakes of manipulatie van kiezers moet bestrijden. Dit volgt uit de algemene zorgplicht tegen “systeemrisico’s”, brede maatschappelijke risico’s die jij als zeer groot platform (VLOP) of zeer grote zoekmachine (VLOS) veroorzaakt door zo massaal mensen en bots dingen te laten posten.

De organisaties hebben tot 5 april gekregen om te reageren voor wat betreft de verkiezingen, en tot 26 april voor de overige vragen. Toevallig zie ik al een eerste maatregel: YouTube krijgt label als video generatieve AI bevat.

Arnoud

Het bericht Europese Commissie gaat AI-inzet van grote platforms aanpakken verscheen eerst op Ius Mentis.

Learn to Become a Supply Chain Data Analyst with Unilever’s New Certificate Program

Open Culture - 25 maart 2024 - 8:01am

Supply chains—we never thought too much about them. That is, until the pandemic, when supply chains experienced severe disruptions worldwide, leaving us waiting for products for weeks, if not months. That’s when we started appreciating the importance of supply chains and their resilience.

Companies like Unilever rely on supply chains to manufacture their goods (e.g., Dove, Lipton, and Ben & Jerry’s) and then move them around the globe. For Unilever, it’s essential that their supply chains remain efficient and strong. Working in partnership with Coursera, the company has created a new Supply Chain Data Analyst Professional Certificate to help entry-level professionals learn more about using data to manage effective supply chains. Designed to be completed in roughly four months, the certificate consists of four courses: 1) Supply Chain Management and Analytics, 2) Using Data Analytics in Supply Chain, 3) Implementing Supply Chain Analytics, and 4) Supply Chain Software Tools.

As students move through the program, they will learn how to “achieve cost savings, reduce lead times, enhance customer satisfaction, and adapt to changing market conditions through data-driven insights and analytical approaches.” They will also learn key skills like demand forecasting and how to monitor supply chains for security risks.

Emphasizing real-world experience, students will “take on the role of an analyst for a fictitious consumer goods company specializing in organic farm to table consumer products. With over 20 unique assignments, [students will] use spreadsheets and visualization tools to analyze data and make recommendations.”

You can audit the four courses for free, or sign up to earn a shareable certificate for a fee. Students who select the latter option will be charged $49 per month. Coursera estimates that the certificate will take four months to complete, assuming you’re dedicating 10 hours per week. That amounts to about $200 in total. You can enroll here.

Note: Open Culture has a partnership with Coursera. If readers enroll in certain Coursera courses and programs, it helps support Open Culture.

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Woorden in de Kamer (2020-2023) (4)

Nomeis (Siemon Reker) - 24 maart 2024 - 11:59am
We gaan nog even door. Die missertjes van de vorige aflevering doen wat denken aan woorden die veel in het Haagse jargon voorkomen én die blijkbaar lastposten zijn voor degenen die de verslagen tikken. Ze ontsnappen in al hun vertrouwdheid … Lees verder →

Testing the 2024 BMW M2—maybe the last M car with a manual transmission

Ars Technica - 23 maart 2024 - 12:00pm
A pale blue BMW M2 seen parked in the hills

Enlarge / BMW's M2 might be the last M car it builds with three pedals and a stick shift. (credit: Peter Nelson)

We're at an interesting crossroads in the high-performance enthusiast car market. Running east to west is the adoption of electric vehicles and a slow reduction in internal combustion engine car production. North to south is the progression of ICE horsepower from the factory over the years, and it's unclear how far it continues from here. Coming in diagonally is the weakening demand for manual transmissions—this is sadly where they end.

In the middle of this intersection is the 2024 BMW M2 six-speed manual, hanging its tail out in a massive controlled drift around the edges, expressing one last hurrah as BMW's final object of internal-combustion M car affection.

I recently had the opportunity to pilot BMW's latest, smallest M car through some of Southern California's most fun mountain roads, plus Willow Springs International Raceway's Streets of Willow circuit. When it comes to quickly figuring out this kind of car's powertrain and chassis, I can't think of a better mix of pavement. Here's what makes the latest—and last—six-speed-manual-equipped M2 generation an overall excellent enthusiast coupe.

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Reddit faces new reality after cashing in on its IPO

Ars Technica - 23 maart 2024 - 11:10am
Steve Huffman

Enlarge / Steve Huffman, u/spez on Reddit, sold 500,000 of his shares in Reddit’s IPO on Thursday (credit: AFP via Getty Images)

In an interview on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor ahead of Reddit’s market debut on Thursday, chief executive Steve Huffman acknowledged that the mischievous retail investors that congregate on the social media platform might deliberately drive down its share price.

“It’s a free market!” he said.

For Reddit, as for Huffman, the bet on a public offering for a site he described as a “fun and special, but sometimes crazy place” has appeared to pay off.

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Dragon’s Dogma 2 is gritty, janky, goofy, tough, and lots of fun

Ars Technica - 22 maart 2024 - 11:22pm
Player shooting down a griffon with circling beams of light.

Enlarge / One day I will own griffons in such spectacular fashion. But I'm currently carrying a too-heavy backpack and clipped through a hut wall.

With all due respect to the Capcom team, which poured itself into Dragon’s Dogma 2 and deserves praise, raises, and time off, let me get right to it: I love this game for how dumb it is.

I mean "dumb" in the way most heavy metal lyrics are dumb, but you find yourself rocking out nonetheless. Dumb like when you laugh uncontrollably at the sight of someone getting conked in the head and falling over backward. Dumb as in the silliest bits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, just nowhere near as self-aware (unless, due to translation issues, this game actually is self-aware, then I apologize).

Dragon’s Dogma 2 (DD2) reminds me of playing another huge, dumb, enjoyable game: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Not the first time you play through it, though. I’m talking about the second or third run-through (or that 100-plus-hour save in which you refuse to finish the game), and your admiration of this huge, rich world gives way to utter ridiculousness. You one-shot dragons with your broken stealth-archer build, you put buckets on the heads of NPCs to rob them, and you marvel at how the most effective fast travel is horse tilting. You lunge into possibilities, choose chaos, and appreciate all the ways you can do so.

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It’s a few years late, but a prototype supersonic airplane has taken flight

Ars Technica - 22 maart 2024 - 10:44pm
XB-1 takes off on its inaugural flight.

Enlarge / XB-1 takes off on its inaugural flight. (credit: Boom Supersonic)

A prototype jet independently developed by Boom Supersonic made its first flight on Friday, the company said.

The XB-1 vehicle flew from Mojave Air & Space Port in California, reaching an altitude of 7,120 feet (2.2 km) and a maximum speed of 273 mph (439 kph). In a news release, Boom Supersonic said the initial test flight of the XB-1 aircraft met all of its objectives.

"The experience we have gained in reaching this milestone will be invaluable to Boom’s revival of supersonic travel," said Bill “Doc” Shoemaker, Chief Test Pilot for Boom Supersonic.

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GM stops sharing driver data with brokers amid backlash

Ars Technica - 22 maart 2024 - 9:23pm
Scissors cut off a stream of data from a toy car to a cloud

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

After public outcry, General Motors has decided to stop sharing driving data from its connected cars with data brokers. Last week, news broke that customers enrolled in GM's OnStar Smart Driver app have had their data shared with LexisNexis and Verisk.

Those data brokers in turn shared the information with insurance companies, resulting in some drivers finding it much harder or more expensive to obtain insurance. To make matters much worse, customers allege they never signed up for OnStar Smart Driver in the first place, claiming the choice was made for them by salespeople during the car-buying process.

Now, in what feels like an all-too-rare win for privacy in the 21st century, that data-sharing deal is no more.

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Take a trip through gaming history with this charming GDC display

Ars Technica - 22 maart 2024 - 9:08pm

SAN FRANCISCO—Trade shows like the Game Developers Conference and the (dearly departed) E3 are a great chance to see what's coming down the pike for the game industry. But they can also be a great place to celebrate gaming's history, as we've shown you with any number of on-site photo galleries in years past.

The history display tucked away in a corner of this year's Game Developers Conference—the first one arranged by the Video Game History Foundation—was a little different. Rather than simply laying out a parcel of random collectibles, as past history-focused booths have, VGHF took a more curated approach, with mini-exhibits focused on specific topics like women in gaming, oddities of gaming music, and an entire case devoted to a little-known entry in a famous edutainment series.

Then there was the central case, devoted to the idea that all sorts of ephemera—from design docs to photos to pre-release prototypes to newsletters to promotional items—were all an integral part of video game history. The organization is practically begging developers, journalists, and fan hoarders of all stripes not to throw out even items that seem like they have no value. After all, today's trash might be tomorrow's important historic relic.

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