I went to a dealer to buy a car in cash (well, a cashier's check). They had a touch-screen computer with all their forms for me to fill out. It came to a credit approval/application form, and I refused to fill it out because I wasn't opening a loan. The lady assured me it was "standard" and that it wouldn't be used for anything, because I didn't need the loan/credit. I kept refusing, and she kept insisting they only needed it because the software required it to continue. After this impasse, I stood to walk out, and she suddenly changed her tune and somehow "figured out" how to bypass the form. Classy.
Even if you pay cash, a dealer may require a credit check, however you have no obligation to provide any financial details. I think they just want to make sure your credit is good enough for some proxy that your check is good. I've also heard it's for identity purposes. Also, this all might vary by state laws, too...
Fun fact: Car dealerships are actually considered financial institutions under FinCEN regulations. Depending on the cost of the car/cash amount, they may need your SSN for reporting purposes.
“To open a checking or savings account, the bank or credit union will need to verify your name, date of birth, address, and ID number. An ID number can be a social security number or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN).“
Having spent more than a few years in FinTech, I know these things can vary from company to company as companies generally are required to design their own “risk-based” policies for AML and KYC.
I just listened to Dan Carlin's "Destroyer of Worlds" [1] podcast episode, and it was very enlightening. I was modestly familiar with nuclear history, but still learned a lot from this episode.
Apparently a NY Times reporter was live tweeting the meeting
> The discussions became tense when Google's leaders discovered that someone attending the meeting or listening in remotely was supplying live information to Conger, the Times reporter. Brin said he would not continue discussing China because of the leaks, according to the sources who spoke with Business Insider.
> The sources said images of Conger's tweets were displayed on a large screen in the room with Pichai and Brin. One Google employee who had stood to ask a question suddenly addressed whoever was surreptitiously leaking information.
> "F--- you," he said. He then demanded that the person leave.
> The sources said the epithet received some applause.
I'm going to speculate (Occam's razor) that the majority of their server portfolio are 32GB servers in those 400 datacenters, and so this is what they need, and so they documented it as a requirement. For data center migrations, this is fairly typical.
To my knowledge, on Arch it's enabled as module, so unless some application uses Speck (which are none that I have installed, care about or know) then the module will not be loaded and do nothing.
> The issue became public when the client, Beijing Qingbo Data Control Technology, on Sunday posted a statement on Weibo, a Twitter-like social platform in China, saying that it had suffered a data loss on Tencent Cloud on July 20 after using the platform for eight months, and that all of the company’s data – including backup files – were lost and could not be recovered.
The fact that both the production and backup files were affected is really concerning for others using their services.
> It turns out, a couple giant companies — IBM and Halliburton — have been working for years to patent what patent trolls do.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/01/157743897/can-...