• Again with the Torquemada: The president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve has explained that nobody buys anything with Bitcoin (because the government makes it as difficult as possible) and it's a lousy hedge against inflation, having gained just, um, 1000% against the dollar over the last five years.  (WCCFTech)

  Of course, Kashkari is on record for stating elsewhere that there is an "infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve."

  Right.
  

• SpaceX is working on plans to boost Starlink to gigabit speeds.  (Notebook Check)
  
  This will be done using the Gen2 satellites the company started launching last year, that will also provide direct-to-satellite phone service once that is approved by ground-based authorities.
  
  
  
• If you're still annoyed with Apple unilaterally reducing the lifetime of SSL certificate from five years to one, good news: The company plans to reduce it further to just 45 days.  (The Register)
  
  This would completely kill manual installation of SSL certificates.  Nobody has time for that.
  
  
  
• SSD prices are expected to start declining again as nobody continues to buy the hot new AI PCs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Good news.  Prices haven't increased that much since manufacturers slowed production anyway, though the very cheapest sale prices have dried up.
  
  
  
• Apple has announced a new iPad mini.  (9to5Mac)
  
  The CPU is upgraded from the A15 to the A17 chip.  Apart from that, it's the same, with the same 1000% markup on storage prices.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, October 16 2024 06:58 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, October 16 2024 07:59 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, October 16 2024 10:41 PM (rcPLc)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, October 16 2024 11:14 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, October 17 2024 03:51 AM (zx18t)

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• The Internet Archive is back online after the recent DDOS and data breach.  (The Verge)
  
  Currently it's read-only - that is, you can look up existing data but you can't request it to save new websites.  But all the existing data is intact.
  
  Work continues on restoring full functionality.
  
  
  

Tech News

• A Nobel Prize winner (Geoff Hinton) has called out OpenAI for placing profits (the company is not remotely profitable) ahead of safety (what safety?)  (WCCFTech)
  
  I swear, ever prominent figure in AI appears to have performed an auto-lobotomy with a grapefruit spoon.
  
  
  
• Google has signed a deal with nuclear energy developer Kairos Power to run its data centers using, well, nuclear energy.  (CNBC)
  
  Specifically using nuclear energy from small modular reactors which in turn use molten salt cooling.  There are currently, let's see, zero of these operating in the United States and only three in the world.
  
  The first reactor is planned to be online by 2030 but I suspect Elon Musk will have his Mars colony before that happens.
  
  
  
• I do not know why they did that: The iKOOLCORE R2 Max is a mini-PC with maxi-networking.  (Liliputing)
  
  A 4 core Intel N100 or 8 core N305 CPU, up to 32GB (maybe 48GB) of RAM, two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, two 10Gb Ethernet ports, HDMI, USB-C with DisplayPort, and two M.2 NVMe slots.
  
  Here's the catch, though: Intel's N-series CPUs don't have a lot of I/O bandwidth, and after all the network ports are catered for, the M.2 slots get just one PCIe lane each...  Of PCIe 2.0.
  
  That's 500MB per second, when even a budget drive like Crucial's P3 Plus can deliver 5000MB per second.
  
  The kicker is that the 2.5Gb Ethernet ports have PCIe 3.0 connections, when they max out at 250MB per second and cannot possible use that.
  
  
  
• NASA's Europe Clipper mission is on its way to Europa - pure coincidence - courtesy of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.  (The Register)
  
  It is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in 2030, just like everything else.
  
  
  
• If you are running Windows 10, a year from now Microsoft will finally stop bothering you with pointless updates.  (Ars Technica)
  
  I bet they don't though.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, October 16 2024 12:49 AM (zx18t)

Posted by: furball at Wednesday, October 16 2024 01:06 AM (As8gg)

Posted by: Bob in Houston at Wednesday, October 16 2024 01:31 AM (YBLgY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, October 16 2024 01:38 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, October 16 2024 03:07 AM (zx18t)

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• SpaceX's Starship test completes with a remarkable "chopstick" booster catch.  (The Verge)
  
  The most successful Starship test so far, with both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship itself performing flawlessly.
  
  I'm linking The Verge for this one because the story is reported completely straight - just the facts, ma'am - and the comments are cheerfully ripping apart The Verge's usual two minute hate pieces.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Elon Musk is planning to sue the Combat Camel Corps over blatant First Amendment violations.  (MSN)
  
  The CCC - wait, I'm told that stands for California Coastal Commission - and specifically Gretchen Newsom - were stupid enough to say that they rejected the SpaceX application for additional launch slots at Vandenburg because of what Musk posted on Twitter.

• Turns out 23andMe is a genetic robot vacuum cleaner.  (SFGate)
  
  If you used the service - or if anyone in your family did - you should probably log in and delete your data.
  
  This won't do anything but it might work in your favour in the resulting class action lawsuits.
  
  CEO Anne Wojcicki says she's open to takeover offers.  Or people who want to buy the company.  Either one.
  
  
  
• Unidentified drones swarmed Langley Air Force Base, and the Pentagon is "stumped".  (MSN)
  
  The drones circled the base for seventeen days.
  
  
  
• The average LLM (AI) jailbreak attempt takes 42 seconds.  (SC World)
  
  20% of attacks succeed, and of those, 90% leak confidential information.
  
  
  
• A detailed review of the Terramaster F8 Plus.  (Liliputing)
  
  This is an 8 bay M.2 NAS with 10Gb Ethernet and an 8 core CPU.  It's only slightly larger than an external 3.5" hard drive, and can store up to 64TB of data and hold up to 32GB of RAM for running applications (it ships with 16GB as standard, but it uses a regular SO-DIMM slot.)
  
  There's also cheaper F8 Nonplus, with a 4 core CPU and shipping with 8GB of RAM.  That should be fine if you just need the server functions and don't want to run apps on it.
  
  
  
• Gotta catch 'em all, but I'm out of disk space: A Game Freak leak has dumped company info and a terabyte of Pokemons.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Game Freak is the company developing the Pokemon games, though the franchise is owned by the Pokemon Company and Nintendo.  Anyway, the Skitty is definitely out of the bag now.
  
  
  
• The Beelink SER9 is the fastest mini-PC you can get right now.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It has more than twice the CPU performance and three to four times the graphics performance of my Beelink SER5.  But I have three of those and the SER9 costs more than three times as much if you already have memory and SSDs you can reuse.
  
  The Ryzen 370 used in the SER9 only supports LPDDR5X memory, not regular SO-DIMMS, so you can't install your own unless you have a desoldering station and a very steady hand. It does have two M.2 slots though.
  
  But if you don't need three computers and just want something small and quiet that gets the job done, it does.

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Tuesday, October 15 2024 03:43 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, October 15 2024 08:46 AM (bg2DR)

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• After being sued by hosting company WP Engine for libel and extortion, it would appear that Automattic, the commercial arm of WordPress, has chosen to respond with outright theft. (MSN)
  
  One thing Automattic accused WP Engine of was not contributing back to the project. WP Engine developed and maintained the WordPress plugin ACF - Advanced Custom Fields, which has two million users.
  
  So Automattic stole it. (Twitter)
  
  They took the project, changed the name, and assigned themselves ownership, dragging all two million users along with it.
  
  They said they were forced to do that because WP Engine could not properly manage and maintain the project. WP Engine could not manage and maintain the project because Automattic blocked them.
  
  WP Engine's lawyers who were already looking at replacing their Porsches with Ferraris are now thinking maybe a Bugatti Chiron would be nice.

• California has rejected SpaceX's application to launch additional missions from the state, with some officials opening themselves up to a massive First Amendment lawsuit.  (LA Times / MSN)
  
  Oops.
  
  Well, more business for Florida I guess.
  
  
  
• Boeing will lay off 10% of its employees, about 17,000 people. (MSN)
  
  This comes as no surprise to anyone, but is unlikely to affect the people who should be affected.
  
  
  
• Instagram and Threads moderation is out of control. (The Verge)
  
  Did your post get deleted? Too bad, so sad.

  Moderation is a perennial problem on social media, but based on social media posts and The Verge staff's own experiences, Meta is currently banning and restricting users on a hair trigger. One of my colleagues was locked out of her account briefly this week after joking that she "wanted to die" because of a heatwave.
  
  Others, like Jorge Caballero, say the automated system has added fact checks with mistakes to material it detects as political, as well as throttling posts with factual information for events like hurricanes. Some have dubbed their situation "crackergate," as recent posts mentioning saltines or the words "cracker jacks" have been instantly removed.

  Simple solution: Don't use Instagram or Threads. Twitter doesn't do this.
  
  
  
• The Verge is having yet another normal day. (The Verge)
  
  Geeze, lady. Take a couple of valium. Or down a fifth of bourbon. Not both, but one or the other.
  
  
  
• The San Francisco Chronicle has put in place an AI resource nobody asked for to answer questions nobody is asking about the political candidate nobody voted for. (San Francisco Chronicle) (archive site)
  
  It's unintentional self-parody all the way down.
  
  
  
• Do you need 384 cores and 3TB of RAM in a single 1U server? ASRock has a motherboard for you. (Serve the Home)
  
  No price attached but these are generally cheaper than you would think - much cheaper than the CPUs that plug into them.
  
  
  
• We keep pushing products that nobody wants, and for some reason people aren't buying them. (The Register)
  
  It's a meh year for desktop PCs, and a lousy year for Windows. There are a couple of bright spots in the laptop market, with AMD's Ryzen 370 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series, but not enough to lift PC sales out of the doldrums.
  
  Except for limited edition Hyte PC cases, which are reportedly doing gangbusters.
  
  
  

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Monday, October 14 2024 03:28 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, October 14 2024 02:01 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, October 14 2024 04:56 PM (PiXy!)

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• One of the two quartz mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, is in the process of reopening after the area was devastated by Hurricane Helene ten days ago.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Faster than I had expected.
  
  Chip fabrication depends on ultra-pure silicon.  To make the ingots of ultra-pure silicon, you need crucibles to melt the silicon in, that are of even higher purity.  That's where these two quartz mines come in.
  
  Chipmakers have a supply of pre-made silicon because they're not idiots, and the silicon makers likely have a supply of crucibles, but a closure lasting more than a couple of months could have started causing problems.
  
  

• Vietnam is planning to build six chip fabs, with the first one online by 2030.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Vietnam is nominally communist, but then so are the current governments of the US, the UK, Canada, France, and Australia.
  
  
  
• Leaked benchmarks indicate that AMD's Ryzen 9800X3D is up to 13% faster than the current Ryzen 7800X3D.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Which is kind of meh, but it's a meh year for computer hardware.
  
  
  
• If you're thinking you'll just buy a 7800X3D instead, well, good luck with that.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's in short supply and prices on Newegg have jumped from around $399 to $699.  Though that's because Newegg themselves are out of stock and the best marketplace offer - from China - is wildly expensive.
  
  My local store actually has the 7800X3D on sale right now, so your mileage may vary.
  
  
  
• TikTok executives knew about the site's effect on teenagers.  (NPR)
  
  It turned them into giggling idiots drawn ineluctably to every new trend, no matter how absurd it might be.
  
  ...
  
  Yes.
  
  
  
• Ecovacs robot vacuum cleaners have been hacked to shout slurs at their owners.  (Vice)
  
  This is the same company under fire in Australia for collecting audio and video recordings and keeping them even after the customers deleted the files.
  
  
  
• We're not mad at you, Goldmusk, just disappointed.  (The Verge)
  
  The Verge having another totally normal day.
  
  
  
• We are mad at you, Goldmusk.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Ars Technica is having a just spectacularly normal day.
  
  
  
• Got a shipping notice and a UPS tracking number for my Calliope Mori Limited Edition Hyte Y40 PC case.
  
  Soon.  Soon I will have them all!
  
  
  
• But it might take a while to build systems in all the cases I now have.

Apropos of Moo Deng Video of the Day

Posted by: normal at Saturday, October 12 2024 08:28 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, October 13 2024 05:04 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: muddasir96 at Monday, October 21 2024 07:26 PM (qpRrH)

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• Terrorist supporters have claimed responsibility for the DDOS and hack of the Internet Archive.  (Gizmodo)
  
  Maybe it's true.  Maybe they're lying.  There are many powerful groups that would love to scrub the internet's memory forever.
  
  But they're publicly boasting of this on Twitter from a verified account, so they've made themselves easy targets for law enforcement.
  
  
  
• The core archive is unaffected.  (Twitter)
  
  The site is down temporarily while the staff scrub the front-end servers and upgrade security, but it will be back.

• Tesla has announced its new Robotaxi, the gloriously art deco Robovan, and the new Tesla Robot.  (Tesla)
  
  A good old-fashioned future.
  
  
  
• AMD very graciously allowed Intel to be relevant for an entire week before stomping on them with a 192 core server CPU that is 20% cheaper than Intel's 128 core model.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  AMD's new lineup includes Zen 5 models with up to 128 cores, and Zen 5c models (functionally identical cores but lower clock speeds) up to 192 cores.
  
  That article has lots of benchmarks; WCCFTech has the price list.
  
  If you need high clock speeds rather than just the maximum possible number of cores, the 9575F offers 64 cores running at 5GHz.  The 192 core 9965 "only" runs at 3.7GHz.
  
  In theory you could put one of each in the same server.  (I think?)  Not sure how much the Linux kernel would appreciate that though.
  
  
  
• Intel meanwhile has announced its new Arrow Lake desktop CPUs - the 245K, 265K, and 285K.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 285K will be slightly slower than the existing 14900K for gaming, but use less power.  Unfortunately it is expected to be up to 20% slower than AMD's best gaming chips like the 7800X3D, which uses much less power.
  
  Expected to be at retain on the 24th, so not much in the way of benchmarks until then, except for the one leaked result on CPUBenchmark.
  
  
  
• Intel claims the new chips provide parity performance at half the power.  (PC World)
  
  Which is very interesting because the claimed power consumption hasn't changed with respect to 13th or 14th generation parts, neither the base TDP nor the maximum turbo power.
  
  Which means that either Intel was lying before, or is lying now, or both.
  
  
  
• Just to make sure they rain on all of Intel's parades AMD's 9800X3D is expected to have an all-core clock 400MHz faster than the existing 7800X3D.  (VideoCardz)
  
  That would salvage the lackluster launch of the 9000 series.  It's not at all a bad CPU, but it shines at heavy server-oriented workloads rather than typical productivity apps or gaming.
  
  With that clock speed boost the 9800X3D should easily be the fastest CPU available for games.
  
  
  
• Maybe when the DOJ's antitrust team has finished beating up Google it could take a look at Adobe.  Adobe no longer offers perpetual licenses for its low-end Elements products.  (Notebook Check)
  
  You can "buy" the 2025 editions right now, but the software will drop dead three years after it is installed.
  
  
  
• What's better than Ethernet?  Ultra Ethernet.  AMD has shown off its first Ultra Ethernet cards.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These run at 400Gbps and offload a lot of the networking stack to a dedicated CPU on the card.
  
  
  
• Serve the Home got hold of the new AMD Epyc CPUs and a 400Gb Ethernet card and put them to the test.  (Serve the Home)
  
  I'm not sure how many homes need to be served with a 384 core server with 800Gbps of total network bandwidth, but here you go.
  
  
  
• There's a vulnerability in 64 different Qualcomm chipsets.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This only affects about two billion people, so you don't need to worry.
  
  And no, there are no details.
  
  
  
• Three executives in charge of Amazon's Just Walk Out project - cashierless brick-and-mortar stores - just walked out.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  It is a thing.
  
  
  
• Amazon dreams of AI agents that do the shopping for you.  (Wired)
  
  Burn in Hell, Amazon.
  
  
  
• The latest Windows 11 update leaves 9GB of trash behind.  (PC World)
  
  Trash that it is impossible to delete short of reinstalling Windows entirely.
  
  That's nearly 50 cents worth of storage at today's SSD prices.
  
  
  
• The world must Act Now (TM) or We Are Doomed (TM).  (Dawn)
  
  More doomed than the last eleven times we were doomed?
  
  
  
• Redbox went bankrupt.  But the Redboxen remain.  (MSN)
  
  They weigh 900 pounds and there are 24,000 of them scattered across the country, typically wired directly into power so you can't even unplug them.  Walgreens says that just sitting there the boxen are costing the company $184,000 a month.
  
  And they're typically anchored in concrete to prevent theft, so you can't just yank them out.
  
  
  
• London is gone.  (The Register)
  
  Blown into the North Sea.  The BBC is predicting 13,508 mph winds, and overnight lows of 400C in Nottingham.
  
  Conditions are expected to return to reality this weekend.
  
  
  
• Automattic is doing open source dirty.  (Hey)
  
  This is the personal site of DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails.  I might have some philosophical differences with the design of Rails, but to my knowledge DHH never blackmailed or libeled anyone.
  
  
  
• The Fifth Circuit has upheld a lower court's finding of contributory copyright infringement against ISP Grande, but tossed the calculation of damages.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  The ISP was found liable because it did not act on infringement notices, but the calculation of the damages at $47 million was found to be incorrect and excessive.  Where a CD was copied, the jury calculated the full damages on each song individually, which was deemed incorrect.
  
  The damage calculation heads back to the lower court while the fundamental matter of law likely goes to the Supreme Court, as the entire industry has an interest in how this turns out.
  
  
  
• The Amelia Watson Limited Edition Hyte Y40 PC case is discounted to $199 through October 28.  (Twitter)
  
  I already got mine, but that's okay.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, October 11 2024 10:18 PM (pnaK4)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, October 11 2024 10:30 PM (pnaK4)

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, October 12 2024 10:58 AM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, October 12 2024 01:15 PM (pnaK4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, October 12 2024 02:57 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, October 12 2024 08:00 PM (bg2DR)

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• The Internet Archive has been hacked and credentials for 31 million users stolen.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The passwords are encrypted with Bcrypt, which is pretty robust, but if you shared a password between the archive and some other site, it's time to change it and also to stop doing that.

• Turkey has banned Discord because, well, Turkey.  (Reuters)
  
  If you let a turkey into your house, it's going to do turkey things.
  
  
  
• 80% of developers will need to "upskill" by 2027 to keep pace with the growing demands of goat vomit.  (IT Professional)
  
  Wait, my mistake.  It says here "generative AI".
  
  
  
• The walls are closing in on (throws dart) ELON MUSK.  (The Verge)
  
  Sure, he's worth a quarter of a trillion dollars, but we've got him for sure this time.
  
  
  
• Why GOV.UK's Exit this Page doesn't use escape.  (Beeps)
  
  Sounds like nonsense at first, but it's actually a useful function and the reasoning is sound.
  
  
  
• Are Intel's new CPUs just bad for multi-threaded performance?  (CPU Benchmark)
  
  The eight core laptop 288V runs like a four year old AMD 5800U - also with eight cores, and the 24 core desktop 285K runs like a two year old 12 core AMD 7900.  In both cases the AMD chips use half the power.
  
  The Intel chips have great single-threaded performance but multi-threaded test results so far are meh at best.

• Geoff Hinton and John Hopfield have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in AI.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Real AI, not this modern crap.
  
  Hinton invented the technique of back propagation in 1978, and Hopfield invented the Hopfield network in 1982, which is (says Wikipedia) a form of recurrent neural network, or a spin glass system, that can serve as a content-addressable memory.
  
  The key trick for winning the Nobel Prize continues to be not dying before the committee recognises your work.  Hinton is 76; Hopfield is 91.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Wikipedia the site really seems to have fucked the goat this time.  (The Publica)
  
  Downplaying over a thousand documented cases of child sexual abuse that have led to the arrest and conviction of 36 people so far.  
  
  No, Wikipedia, I don't think I will be donating to your fund drive.
  
  
  

Tech News

• AI image processing effortlessly transforms your precious memories into flavourless pap.  (The Verge)
  
  If even The Verge noticed this, it must be bad.
  
  
  
• Roblox is inflating its player numbers, says an investor newsletter aimed at short-sellers.  (The Verge)
  
  Gold is shiny, says an investor newsletter aimed and gold collectors.
  
  Roblox called bullshit on this, citing its public earnings figures.  However user numbers are calculated, revenue has increased 22% over the past year.
  
  
  

Not At All Tech News

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, October 10 2024 02:00 PM (pnaK4)

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• Artist* Jason Allen has requested judicial review of the US Copyright Office's decision to deny him copyright on his* piece Théâtre D'opéra Spatial.  (Ars Technica)
  
  At issue is that Allen did not paint the image, neither in a traditional physical medium, nor in a digital one.  It was generated using Midjourney.

  "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" is a wholly original image expressing his idea, Allen said, and to produce that human expression, he dedicated more than 100 hours to refining Midjourney text prompts through an iterative process that he estimates took more than 600 prompts. Allen told Ars that through this process, he crafted his own prompt language after determining "which parts of his instructions were effective and which were not," as well as which parts were "not even considered."

  If it took you ten minutes to try each prompt, I would have to wonder what you were doing in between.

  The Copyright Office has said that Allen's prompts are copyrightable, but only Midjourney was responsible for the output derived from the prompts. Walsh told Ars that if Allen had used any non-AI tool to transform the final image a little, even just applying a filter, he would be "good to go" to register his work and sue anyone who "verbatim copies" it.

  Surprisingly, and the EFF concurs, the Copyright Office has this pretty much right.
  
  * For some value of this term.
  
  
  

• Bad news for Google, good news for Android users everywhere: The judge in the Epic vs. Google case has issued his final ruling, requiring Google to make third-party app stores (like Epic's) available via the Google Play Store.  (The Verge)
  
  No more monkey business like Google attempted with Samsung to make it all but impossible to sideload apps.  The app stores must be installable from the Play Store itself.
  
  In addition, Google can no longer require app developers to use its own payment services, or restrict how developers communicate with their customers how to install and pay for their software.
  
  No such decision has been reached against Apple as yet - at least, not in the US.  Things are not looking great for Apple in the EU.
  
  
  
• If you want a Lego model of an AMD Epyc server CPU - the current 4th generation model with 12 CPU dies - this is now a thing that exists.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's not a working model, but it is a model.
  
  
  
• Asus' new "Nitropath" memory slots help your RAM run faster on partly-populated motherboards.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Up to 400MHz faster, which could increase overall performance of your computer by...  2%.  If you're lucky.
  
  Not without value, but not a big deal.
  
  
  
• How a Clinton-era law opened up US secrets to China.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Yeah, who could have ever predicted that mandating back doors would lead to adversaries focusing their attention on those back doors?
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, Okta.  (HackRead)
  
  Okta is a "security" company that lets other companies outsource logins to their applications.
  
  Okta is a constant target for hackers as a result.  And they were successful.  Again.

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, October 09 2024 12:51 PM (nk1Z+)

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• Insecure "Deebot" vacuum cleaners made by Chinese company Ecovacs are recording you and taking pictures and measuring every corner of your house and sending the data back to the manufacturer.  (ABC)  (no, the other one)
  
  But you agreed to this when you were silly enough to buy one of their products.

  The Chinese home robotics company, which sells a range of popular Deebot models in Australia, said its users are "willingly participating" in a product improvement program.

  When users opt into this program through the Ecovacs smartphone app, they are not told what data will be collected, only that it will "help us strengthen the improvement of product functions and attached quality".

  But I can use the app to delete my data, right?

  It also states that voice recordings, videos and photos that are deleted via the app may continue to be held and used by Ecovacs.

  But at least the data doesn't go any further, right?

  Cybersecurity researcher Dennis Giese reported the problems to the company last year after he found a series of basic errors putting Ecovacs customers' privacy at risk.

  "If their robots are broken like that," he asked, "how does their back-end [server] look?

  "Even if the company's not malicious, they might be the victim themselves of corporate espionage or nation state actors."

  But... Lerian Jihad time.

   

• Intel's new Core Ultra 9 285K desktop CPU - expected to arrive this week - sets a new single-threaded performance record.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It scores 5268 on Passmark (my preferred benchmark for mainstream CPUs), about 10% ahead of competing chips from AMD and Apple.
  
  On the multi-threaded version of the test, though, things are not so rosy.
  
  There the 24 core (8P, 16E) 285K comes in behind AMD's Ryzen 7 7900, which has 12 cores, is two years old, and uses between half and one third the power of the Intel chip.
  
  That might be a hiccup, but the 285K has only 8 full-size cores, without hyper-threading.  (Intel has removed hyper-threading in this generation.)  The Ryzen chip has 12 full-size cores with hyper-threading.
  
  
  
• React on the server is not PHP all over again.  (Christoffer Artmann)
  
  No, it's not.
  
  
  
• It's worse.  (Infrequently Noted)
  
  And here's why.
  
  
  
• After shutting down its cashierless stores - where you can walk in, pick out what you want, and just leave - Amazon is looking to sell the technology to other companies.  (CNBC)
  
  I hear this is already big in California.