• 96% of third-party containers deployed to the cloud contain known vulnerabilities.  (ZDNet)
  
  And 63% of code used to deploy cloud solutions is also insecure.
  
  Basically if you follow the latest standards and best practices in deploying a containerised cloud solution, you're fucked.
  
  I use containers - both the old and new servers are containerised - but for isolation, not for deployment.  And I certainly don't use third-party containers for production (and rarely even for development).
  
  Docker...  Basically sucks.

• U.S. needs to work with Europe to slow China’s innovation rate, says Commerce Secretary Raimondo.  (CNBC)
  
  That headline struck me as still more paid propaganda for China from the mainstream press, but that's unusual for CNBC.  It's actually a direct quote:

  If we really want to slow down China’s rate of innovation, we need to work with Europe.  ...  We have to work with our European allies to deny China the most advanced technology so that they can’t catch up in critical areas like semiconductors.  ...  We want to work with Europe, to write the rules of the road for technology, whether it’s TikTok or artificial intelligence or cyber.

  That doesn't mean it's not paid propaganda; it's just not CNBC getting paid off.
  
  
  
• Phison has shown a new PCIe 5 SSD controller for both server and client devices.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Toshiba already showed off controllers for server SSDs, but the client models are new.
  
  These will support transfer rates up to 14GB per second.  Which is a lot.
  
  
  
• The users are always wrong.  (UTK)
  
  But so are the programmers, and so are the managers.  The secret to success is to never try to do anything.
  
  
  
• Russia has arrested the head of a cybersecurity company on charges of high treason.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Because he wouldn't roll over for the intelligence agencies running the ransomware gangs.
  
  
  
• Digital pickpocketing the Apple Pay way.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Hackers can spend unlimited amounts on your Visa card from a locked iPhone without the phone ever leaving your pocket.  Apparently does not work with Mastercard or with Android devices.
  
  Researchers notified Apple of this a year ago.
  
  
  
• An entirely different attack has been making the rounds on Android.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Malware embedded in at least 200 apps on the Play Store has been signing people up to unwanted paid subscriptions.  The apps have been removed but that doesn't mean the subscriptions have been cancelled, and it certainly doesn't mean anyone is getting their money back.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Friday, October 01 2021 12:27 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, October 01 2021 01:49 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, October 01 2021 10:37 AM (MuaLM)

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• Dude, where's my stuff?  (JP Morgan)
  
  Why absolutely everything is out of stock absolutely everywhere.
  
  Which goes double for Australia.
  
  
  

• So that's where the 3000x2000 displays have gone.  (AnandTech)
  
  The Huawei MateBook X Pro has a 3000x2000 display.  On the other hand it doesn't even make an attempt at the Four Essential Keys - there aren't even labels overlaid on the cursor keys, has no storage options, and while it does have a touch screen it doesn't have the stylus that would make that display truly useful.
  
  Kind of meh.  Also made by slave labour for the PLA.
  
  
  
• The WD Red SN700 is an M.2 NVMe SSD intended for caching duty in NAS boxes.  (Anandtech)
  
  That means it's designed for consistent performance and durability rather than the absolute peak throughput or the lowest possible price.  And it's available in capacities up to 4TB, which is currently an under-served category.  (I'm about to buy one, and the available models are not cheap.)
  
  
  
• Twitter fell over.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  And less than nothing of value was lost.
  
  My sixth appeal of my most recent ban is pending now.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's two-factor authentication for Office 365 fell over.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  And it failed safe, so that...  Wait, what?

  This issue could potentially affect any user if they leverage MFA and either Network Policy Server (NPS) or Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to access Microsoft 365 services. This issue only affect on-premises users, and cloud hosted users are not affected.

  Their cloud service failed in such a way as to only affect those not using their cloud service.
  
  
  
• Apple updated iWorks.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  And it's not a subscription.  But you have to buy a Mac, which is worse.
  
  
  
• Six reasons to replace your Surface Pro 7 with a Surface Pro 8.  (ZDNet)
  
  It's one louder.
  
  
  
• Install Windows 11 on a potato.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The Universal MediaCreationTool can now create install files for Windows 11.  You still need an activation key, but otherwise it will install regardless of whether your computer meets all of Microsoft's strict compatibility rules, or indeed any of them.
  
  
  
• Microsoft is rushing to fix a bug that leaks Exchange Server login credentials.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  A bug they've known about since 2017.
  
  
  
  
• Jelly much?  (9to5Mac)
  
  The new iPad Mini 6 suffers from visible jelly scrolling.  Apple says this is entirely normal and totally not an issue because, and I quote, fuck you that's why.
  
  The actual cause is that the iPad Mini, a small tablet that will mostly be used to read content in portrait mode, has a screen that is natively in landscape mode.  Jelly scrolling - there's video at the link - appears mostly when you rotate a display so that it's refreshing on one axis and scrolling in the other.  It is to some degree unavoidable if you turn your device sideways.
  
  Apple saves you the trouble by delivering the device sideways out of the box.
  
  
  
• RemObjects Elements for personal use is available for $199 per year.  (Elements)
  
  It supports Object Pascal, C#, Basic, Swift, Java, and Go, and compiles to .NET, iOS, Android, WebAssembly, JVM, and native binaries for Windows, Mac, and Linux - including the Raspberry Pi.
  

Posted by: normal at Thursday, September 30 2021 10:43 AM (obo9H)

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• Facebook has abandoned the idea of Instagram for Kids after everyone in the Universe, and many people from nearby universes, told them what a terrible idea it was.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  The planned app was to target children under 13.  You do have to wonder where these people come from and how small their bubbles are that they even contemplated this.
  
  They say that YouTube and TikTok have versions for children, but YouTube has  - always has had - content for children, and TikTok is an internationally designated relativistic black hole targeting zone.
  
  
  

Tech News

• For just $3 you can strangle AMP at its source.  (Apple)
  
  This is a Safari extension for iOS that finds Google AMP links and converts them to take you to the original content instead.
  
  
  
• The problem with the blockchain is the blockchain.  (The Block Crypto)
  
  Oops.  Accidentally spent $22 million in transaction fees to transfer $100k.
  
  
  
• Spider.
  
  
  
• The problem with North Korea is North Korea.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If you try to travel secretly to North Korea, people will notice and assume you are up to no good - particularly when you are up to no good.
  
  
  
• This is impossible.  What mistake are you making?  (Quanta)
  
  The discovery of a double charm tetraquark was met with appropriate levels of skepticism, but seems to check out.  Unlike those faster-than-light neutrinos that were all down to a faulty cable.
  
  
  
• Sydney is fully exiting lockdown December 1.
  
  No vaccine mandates, no vaccine passports, no intrastate travel restrictions.
  
  The past couple of months have still been appallingly authoritarian and a huge overreaction, but they at least had the sense to back off before it blew up in their faces.  Assuming they actually follow through.  We'll see.
  
  Melbourne continues to spiral into the abyss.
  
  
  
• The FCC is setting up a $1.9 billion fund to rip Chinese spy equipment out of US communications networks.  (ZDNet)
  
  Larger telcos can't access the funds, but smaller carriers, schools, libraries, and other organisations providing internet access are eligible.
  
  This is not the worst way to spend public funds.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 28 2021 11:48 PM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: MadRocketSci at Wednesday, September 29 2021 05:02 AM (hRoyQ)

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• Chipmakers to carmakers: Get out of the Stone Age.  (Fortune)
  
  Carmakers to chipmakers: Your old chips actually fucking worked.  Well, not worked as such, but failed in documented ways.  It takes years to validate a new design, and not taking the time to do that validation could get people killed.
  
  
  
• Why is Elizabeth Holmes facing criminal charges when other tech CEOs aren't?  It's because she's a wxmxn, isn't it?  (NPR)
  
  Because she's a wxmxn who engaged in fraud that could have killed people, yes.
  
  
  

Tech News

• A review of AMD's "new" 4700S CPU.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is actually a a broken PlayStation 5 chip with the graphics cores disabled.  It has up to 16GB of soldered-in GDDR6 memory - much faster than DDR4 - but the PlayStation was never designed to support a separate GPU so it only has 4 lanes of PCIe 2.0, which is kind of crap.
  
  It's an adequate desktop CPU but useless for gaming.  But if the price is right and you're not planning to play games it might work fine.
  
  
  
• AMD hit 16% market share on server CPU sales in the last quarter.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Up from basically 0% five years ago.
  
  
  
• Forget machine learning, return to inverse FFT.  (Revue)
  
  A simpler approach to eliminating Moiré patterns, and one that actually works.
  
  
  
• A raytraced Minecraft clone running on a budget FPGA.  (GitHub)
  
  Pretty basic but kind of neat.  It's a 16-bit CPU running at 32MHz, but has hardware designed to run the game's graphics and physics.
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, September 27 2021 11:10 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, September 28 2021 12:56 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: MadRocketSci at Tuesday, September 28 2021 04:35 AM (hRoyQ)

Posted by: MadRocketSci at Tuesday, September 28 2021 05:13 AM (hRoyQ)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, September 28 2021 06:35 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, September 28 2021 09:35 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, September 28 2021 11:46 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, September 28 2021 02:54 PM (PiXy!)

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• The BBC is bringing back Russell T Davies to revive Doctor Who.  (BBC)
  
  Which the BBC themselves killed.
  
  I'm cautiously pessimistic.  I don't think it will be good, but I think it might at least return to being watchable.

• Germany's attempts to balance free speech with their national pastime of stamping out all independent thought seems to be floundering.  (MSN)
  
  They are shocked that politicians are being criticised:

  The aim of our legislative package is to protect all those who are exposed to threats and insults on the internet

  They see being rude to those who richly deserve it as a crime to be punished.
  
  Well, I don't live in Germany, so go fuck yourselves you fascist Furbies.
  
  
  
• Which VPN is best for you?  (ZDNet)
  
  They give top marks to NordVPN which got hacked two years ago.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Second on the list is ExpressVPN which their own reporting says no-one should touch with a ten-foot pole.
  
  Number three is Surfshark which...  I haven't heard anything bad about.  I haven't heard much about them at all, which might be a good sign, because when things go bad in the security world that invariably makes the news.  Well, the news I follow.
  
  
  
• Hands on with HP's new Pavilion  Aero.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  I mentioned this one before; it's a 13" laptop with an AMD CPU, a 16:10 2560x1600 display, and the Four Essential Keys.  Potentially the best small laptop available right now with Dell's Inspiron 14 7000 no longer available.
  
  
  

Even South Canada Still Has Some Freedom of Speech Video of the Day

Posted by: normal at Monday, September 27 2021 12:52 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Monday, September 27 2021 01:00 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, September 27 2021 02:04 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, September 27 2021 03:29 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Matthew Dixon Cowles at Monday, September 27 2021 10:49 AM (irynM)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, September 27 2021 11:41 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, September 27 2021 01:59 PM (MuaLM)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, September 27 2021 10:13 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 28 2021 01:26 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 28 2021 02:03 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, September 28 2021 09:41 AM (MuaLM)

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• Update your Chrome browser.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Update your Exchange server.
  
  Update your VMWare vCenter.
  
  Update your iOS.
  
  Update your IOS.  That's Cisco rather than Apple.
  
  Update your SonicWall security devices.  Again.
  
  Update your, uh, European Union.  Or not, that one's definitely non-critical.
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• China has banned cryptocurrencies.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, except for one, controlled by China.
  
  Be interesting to see what happens with video card prices.  Hard drive prices are on their way back down after the Chia mining crazes fizzled out, but video cards are in short supply even without the miners.
  
  Anyway, I have an RTX 3060 now - albeit a laptop 3060 - which should do for a while.
  
  
  
• A teenager on TikTok invalidated the garbage research of thousands of garbage scientists.  (The Verge)
  
  
  
  
  How it happened is you're lazy and stupid and your research is worthless.
  
  
  
• Your face is not a bar code.  (UCLA)
  
  
  
• Your butthole on the other hand...  (The Guardian)
  
  
  
• A look at the Asus Zenbook 13.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  This one has a Ryzen 5800U, an OLED display covering 100% of DCI-P3, albeit only at 1080p, the four essential keys, two USB-C, one USB-A, HDMI, microSD...  No headphone jack and soldered RAM, but oh well.
  
  
  
• Using Nim instead of Python for data processing.  (Benjamin D Lee)
  
  Nim is essentially a statically typed and statically compiled Python.  I say essentially because the languages are just very similar, not actually compatible.
  
  There is a Python JIT compiler - it's called PyPy and it works very well - and in this case it's already nine times faster than Python, but Nim is three times faster again.

• I got to load 1595 web pages last night and manually click a button on each because a certain company's API no longer works.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile not only is Melbourne sending the stormtroopers after anyone in a high-vis jacket, they are sending the brownshirts after Twitch livestreams of said stormtroopers to prevent the government propaganda efforts being punctured.
  
  Time for an intervention, if not a visitation.
  
  
  
• Facebook allegedly volunteered to pay a $5 billion FTC fine as a payoff to keep the agency quiet.  (Ars Technica)
  
  A shareholder lawsuit says that the maximum fine was a little over $100 million - which would put a dent in your pocketbook or mine but would be insignificant to Big Tech, and Facebook accepted a much larger fine just to hush it all up.
  
  Seems plausible.  They suck.
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• What is the point of a 200MP camera sensor when the red pixels are smaller than the wavelength of red light?  Not much.  (AnandTech)
  
  The physics are a bit more complicated than that, and the layout means that you can easily get 50MP or 12.5MP images out of it, but 200MP isn't really going to work even for a sensor that is quite large for a phone camera.
  
  
  
• The EU is pushing the enforce USB-C as a standard phone connector.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, it's better than mini-USB, which was large and clunky, or micro-USB, which was fragile and clunky.
  
  At the high end the list of features a USB-C port might support is incomprehensibly complicated, but if you just want 10W or 20W of power and USB 2.0 data rates you shouldn't have any problems.
  
  
  
• There's another three vulnerabilities in iOS.  (Habr)
  
  Data at risk includes:
  

  • medical information (heart rate, count of detected atrial fibrillation and irregular heart rhythm events)

  • menstrual cycle length, biological sex and age, whether user is logging sexual activity, cervical mucus quality, etc.

  What?
  
  
  
• Minecraft Dungeons is now on Steam.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Unfortunately it doesn't involve mining or crafting, it's just a blocky version of Diablo.
  
  
  
• Twitter is adding Bitcoin tipping to its authoritarian digital hellscape.  (Bloomberg)
  
  There is nothing on Twitter that is worth a Bitcoin transaction fee, much less the tip.  Unless they let you bid to have other people's accounts suspended.  They could make billions that way.
  
  
  
• California just signed their Fuck you Amazon bill into law.  (The Verge)
  
  It targets Amazon's abusive working conditions and obsessive control.  Very much a let's you and him fight situation.
  
  
  
• Now that I have a new computer - still in its box, but I have it - the monitor I wanted is out of stock again.  The LG 27UP850-W, which is a 27" 4K model with USB-C input for my laptop, DisplayPort, HDMI, a 95% DCI-P3 colour gamut, HDR, speakers, a USB hub, Freesync, and a tilt/pivot/height adjustable stand without being horribly overpriced.
  
  Just can't actually get it.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, September 25 2021 04:57 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, September 25 2021 05:02 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, September 25 2021 05:04 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, September 25 2021 05:05 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, September 25 2021 06:02 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, September 25 2021 06:21 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: cxt217 at Saturday, September 25 2021 03:43 PM (MuaLM)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, September 25 2021 04:02 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, September 26 2021 11:15 AM (MuaLM)

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• Knock at the door and the sound of a package being left while I was busy on a video conference.  I assumed it was either the new glasses I ordered or the Dell laptop that I've been waiting on for, hmm, four weeks to the day.
  
  It was both.
  
  Which is great because I've been having increasing trouble with both my old PC and my old glasses.
  
  
  
• If you have been following the protests in Melbourne at all, you should be aware that everything the Victoria state government says is a lie, everything the police say is a lie, and almost everything the mainstream media says is a lie.
  
  Sometimes it's the same lie, but sometimes it's mutually contradictory lies.
  
  ...
  
  Okay, this space unintentionally left blank.  The account that was live-tweeting all the Melbourne protests has just erased their Twitter history.
  
  You'd think if there had been an attack (the discussion of which is now gone) there would be video all over the place but Dictator Dan has banned live video from Melbourne.
  
  What we do have evidence of is this:
  
  
  
  
  World's most liveable city, ladies and gentlemen.
  
  Fortunately the federal courts aren't having it.
  
  
  
  
  Unfortunately the news networks are worthless.
  
  

• Microsoft's new Surface lineup is here.  (AnandTech)
  
  Looks like the leak was legit.
  
  The Surface Pro 8 has a 2880x1920 13" display (why not 3000x2000?) with a quad core CPU and up to 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.  The SSD appears to be a tiny M.2 2230 unit that is user-replaceable, which is a nice improvement over the usual state of everything being glued in place.  If you buy the low-end 128GB model you can upgrade it yourself, except you can't because the biggest M.2 2230 cards you can find at retail are 128GB.
  
  It also has two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack, but no microSD slot because we can't have nice things.
  
  There's also a new Surface Laptop model which has a flippy hinge so that the screen lies flat on top of the keyboard in tablet mode, and a Surface Pro X which is Arm-based and sucks.
  
  
  
• There's also a Surface Duo 2.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Microsoft's dual-screen Android phone is still expensive but at least it now has near-flagship specs, with a Snapdragon 888, 8GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of storage.
  
  
  
• The article doesn't mention the password used this time but we can guess.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  A second farming co-op has been hit with ransomware - despite being on the list of industries that Russia should not attack.
  
  
  
  
• If you're running a really old Android device - before 6.0 - it's time to install Firefox.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Let's Encrypt's old root certificate is expiring at the end of the month.  They already have a new one, but Android versions through 5.0 don't know about it and can't be updated.
  
  Firefox has its own certificate registry, though, and will continue to work.
  
  

• So I'm banned from Twitter again.  They have at least sped up the appeals process.  Where it used to take a week for a bot to automatically reject your appeal, it now takes less than 24 hours.
  
  I only really used it to mock the stupid - because that's where they congregate - and it turns out the stupid didn't appreciate it.
  
  
  
• Specifically I was banned for suggesting that Comrade Dan Andrews - Premier of Victoria - should resign or be thrown into a volcano, whichever works.  And this morning Melbourne got hit by a 5.6 earthquake, so while Twitter might have banned me it appears that someone was listening.
  
  Oh, and despite the earthquake the tradies were on the march again - and Comrade Dan banned the news networks from filming the protest from the air.  That's because they want to keep up the propaganda effort that it's a small group of Neo-Nazis, and that lie dies instantly when you see the extent of the protests from above.
  
  (Also dies instantly when you see the large Sikh contingent.)
  
  
  
• If you're a farm service provider don't use chicken1 as your password.  (ZDNet)
  
  Make it chicken123 next time.  Get the hackers to put in a little effort.

• The new Windows 11 Update Checker tells you why you can't update to Windows 11.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Funny, all it seems to say is because fuck you, that's why.
  
  
  
• If you let goats eat the underbrush, it can't catch fire.  (New York Times)
  
  Thank you Captain Obvious.
  
  Also you can eat the goats.  Not bad, actually.
  
  
  
• We also run Linux.  (Pluralistic)
  
  More nice words being written about the Framework laptop, this time from a hardcore Linux user.  Only major issues she raises are the fiddly installation of the tiny WiFi module if you buy the DIY model, and the lack of a trackpoint when coming from a long line of Lenovo laptops.
  
  
  
• PostgreSQL 14 has updated the JSON query syntax.  (Crunchydata)
  
  And gets it almost sort of right.  PostgreSQL's query syntax is a complete mess when it comes to supporting advanced features.
  
  
  
• A new bug in MacOS lets web bookmarks execute arbitrary commands.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  You need to persuade the user to click on them, but you wouldn't expect a bookmark of a web page to run things on your computer.
  
  
  
• Atlassian's Trello is down, improving the productivity of software developers everywhere.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Trello sucks.
  
  
  
• The FBI had a key to decrypt servers hit by the REvil ransomware.  (Washington Post)
  
  They kept this secret from the companies hit by ransomware attacks because they were planning some kind of operation against the Russian hacker group - exactly what doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere - only REvil disappeared before they could do it.
  
  And then popped right back up again.
  
  
  

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, September 22 2021 11:02 AM (MuaLM)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, September 22 2021 11:18 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, September 22 2021 12:32 PM (MuaLM)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wednesday, September 22 2021 12:45 PM (iKe46)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, September 22 2021 01:53 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, September 22 2021 07:44 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, September 23 2021 01:09 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, September 23 2021 09:31 AM (MuaLM)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, September 23 2021 10:58 AM (ZlYZd)

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