• Censored. (The Herald Sun)
  
  Censored-censored.  Censored?  Censored:

  {"message":"Unsupported content type \"undefined\"","code":"400","raw":"{\"message\":\"Content is deleted, expired or legal killed\",\"code\":410}"}

  Censored censored geofenced.  (The Daily Beast)
  
  
• What all that was about.  (Tech Dirt)
  
  
• Discord's game service only takes 10% of the gross, not the more common 30%.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I don't particularly need or want more game distribution services - I already have Steam and GOG and Humble Bundle and Battle.Net and fucking Origin - but if Steam keeps randomly banning slightly risqué visual novels we may need them.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  
• There's a report of a remote execution vulnerability in SQLite.  (Tencent)
  
  SQLite is installed on approximately three and a half billion devices.  If you have a phone, it has SQLite installed.  If you have a smart home device, you have SQLite.  If you run Chrome or any of the Chromium-based browsers, SQLite.
  
  
  • Every Android device
  • Every iPhone and iOS device
  • Every Mac
  • Every Windows 10 machine
  • Every Firefox, Chrome, and Safari web browser
  • Every instance of Skype
  • Every instance of iTunes
  • Every Dropbox client
  • Every TurboTax and QuickBooks
  • PHP and Python
  • Most television sets and set-top cable boxes
  • Most automotive multimedia systems
  
  Browsers are actually the worry here, because web sites can access SQLite via JavaScript, where on most devices it's embedded and not directly accessible.  Update your browsers.
  
  Firefox and the current edition of Edge are relatively safe since they don't support direct access to the database from remote JavaScript (ZDNet) but Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave are affected.  Safari not confirmed.
  
  The bug has already been fixed, which just leaves us with three and a half billion devices to update.
  
  Google Home devices are also confirmed to be affected.
  
  According to this test page the latest version of Chrome (71) is fixed and Safari is not vulnerable.
  
  
• Ugh.
  
  
• Not that it matters if your password is 123456.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
• Anyway.
  
  
• Samsung's 2019 (is it 2019 already?) Notebook 9 Pen 13 Arsenal Nil looks nice.  (Anand Tech)
  
  
  
  1.12kg for a 13" notebook is kind of chunky next to LG's 1.3kg 17" laptop - and heavier than my 2014 LG UltraPC - but it does have a 40% larger battery than last y...  This year's model.  And a stylus.  And Thunderbolt 3.
  
  Only a 1080p display.  That's not really a problem on a 13" notebook - it's the same pixel size as the LG Gram 17's 2560x1600 screen - but I do love the 3000x2000 resolution of the HP Spectre X2.
  
  
• Intel's Optane memory modules - as opposed to regular Optane SSDs - have an access time of 350ns.  (Extreme3d)
  
  This is where those hyperbolic numbers from the early press releases were coming from.  Intel hasn't been able to deliver that performance through a conventional SSD controller, but with this they could have a game changer for a segment of the server market.  Optane is more expensive than NAND flash, but it's a lot cheaper than RAM - and these modules are closer in speed to RAM than to flash.
  
  
• I told you butter wouldn't suit the works: Phoronix compares ZFS, BTRFS, and EXT4 with 20 SSDs.
  
  I've already committed to ZFS for the new servers, so I was concerned when I saw that first chart, then I realised it was labelled seconds, less is better.
  
  It's a mixed bag overall, with different configurations proving better for different workloads.  For example, EXT4 RAID0 is great for PostgreSQL if you don't care about your data.
  
  
• Doctors without Borders says it is becoming increasingly difficult to assist and promote human trafficking, and we are upset about this.  (Axios)
  
  Possibly not really a tech article.  Should take Axios out of my roundup; it's full of dumb.
  
  
• Huawei is getting well-and-truly Miloed.  (Axios)
  
  It is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
  
  <looks at Huawei tablet>
  
  Sigh.  Most of the concern is around 4G/5G network equipment, though, not handsets and tablets.
  
  
• A roundup of AMD's Navi graphics card rumours.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Plausible, given the publicly reported performance of TSMC 7nm, but just rumours at this point.
  
  
• Samsung's enterprise SSDs get poked and prodded properly.  (PC Perspective)
  
  All the devices show great I/O latencies, from 30µs for the SATA drives down to 16µs for the Z-NAND PCIe devices.  That's 60,000 IOPS even single-threaded.
  
  
  

Social Media News

• If you don't want important content censored post it to Facebook and mark it as private.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  
• Signal to Australia: Rule 5: NO BACKDOORS.
  
  
• Apple is the Google messaging appatoir of social networks.  (9To5Mac)

  We’ve made a few changes to Apple Music that we’d like to tell you about.

  We’re always looking for ways to enhance our focus on artists and help them better connect to fans. So we’ve given Artist Pages an all-new design and added new, personalized Artist Radio.

  Today we’re streamlining music discovery by removing Connect posts from Artist Pages and For You.

  To streamline your use of your 2019 Ford, we have created an all-new design and removed the following infrequently-used features: Wheels, doors, engine.
  

• The time has come, the Arkansas politician said, to regulate social media.  (Tech Dirt)
  
  I....  Maybe?

• I say maybe because, after Patreon banned a user for using a rude word to describe Neo-Nazis, many people jumped ship from Patreon to join competitor SubscribeStar, and PayPal immediately stopped supporting pay outs from SubscribeStar.  (Video)
  
  Regulation is one option.  Dusting off and nuking the site from orbit is another.

• Amid all the chaos and misery, some joy and hope: YouTube's Rewind 2018 is the most hated video of all time with 12 million downvotes and 1.7 million comments, most of them scathing.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  On the other hand, good work on the comment system, YouTube engineers.
  
  

Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 15 2018 04:52 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 15 2018 05:00 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 15 2018 05:05 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, December 16 2018 04:45 AM (LMsTt)

Hide Comments | Add Comment