Wednesday, June 30

Geek

Daily News Stuff 30 June 2021

It Was Not Very Effective Edition

Top Story

  • Microsoft apologised for the confusion caused by its botched Windows 11 announcement and then immediately made things worse.  (ZDNet)

    They have repeatedly added and then deleted details from their compatibility documents.

    And the - largely useless - compatibility checker app they provided has now been removed entirely.

    The article estimates that 40% of PCs sold as recently as 2019 can't run Windows 11, as best as anyone can work out with the horribly confused state of the requirements.  And more than 60% of all PCs currently in use can't be upgraded.

    This has been a textbook case of how not to announce a new product.


Anime of the day is Gate from 2015.  A fantasy world full of magic and dragons manages to open a portal to our world, and marches an army through - right into the middle of Tokyo.

They are merrily proceeding to slaughter the civilian population when the JSDF shows up and quickly demonstrates that orcs are not immune to gunfire, nor dragons to surface-to-air missiles.

The problem is - apart from all the dead bystanders - the gate is still there, and no-one on our side knows how to shut it down.  So the JSDF has to head through and establish a beachhead on the other side, where things...  Are not always what they seem.

Lots of politicians on both sides of the gate being greedy and stupid to a self-destructive degree, which seems pretty damn accurate.


Tech News

  • The new HP Pavilion Aero looks pretty good.  (Thurrott.com)

    Ryzen 5000U CPUs, with up to 8 Zen 3 cores, a 13.3" 16:10 display with a resolution of 2303x1440 - a bit weird, but that's 1920x1200 with a 20% bonus, at 400 nits and covering 100% of Adobe RGB; charging over USB-C or a dedicated charge port, two full-size USB-A, HDMI, headphone jack, and a microSD slot.

    And the Four Essential Keys in their proper place.

    All in a 2.1 pound package, and available in white, silver, and regular or rose gold.  Starting at $749 and available next month.

    Might even run Windows 11.


  • Yes, those Western Digital My Book Live owners got hacked.  (Bleeping Computer)

    The hack involved calling the factory reset function on devices connected to the internet.

    That's it.

    You didn't need to do anything clever because the factory reset function wasn't protected in any way whatsoever.

    I mean, they had password protection in the code, they just, um, commented it out.


  • Russia had access to the network of Denmark's central bank for months.  (Bleeping Computer)

    This is obviously government action.  Hacking a bank, sure, criminals might try that.  Hacking a central bank is pointless unless you're a rival nation.

    And this was part of the broader SolarWinds hack, meaning that was almost certainly the Russian government as well.


  • The breach that wasn't: There are stolen details of 700 million LinkedIn users for sale on the dark web.  (9to5Mac)

    All of which was posted publicly, because that's what LinkedIn is for.  If you don't want your private information out there, the first step is to not post it publicly yourself.


Min Spec Daily Video of the Day


I've linked to articles on Thurott.com a number of times.  Here's Paul Thurrott and sidekick Brad Sams putting the boot into Microsoft over the Windows 11 debacle.

The PC press is much better at this than the Apple press, who are little more than acolytes of a particularly nasty cult.


Disclaimer: Nasty and vacuous.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:01 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 591 words, total size 5 kb.

1 Point no. 1:  people are actually taking about Windows 11

Point no. 11:  there is no such thing as bad press

Posted by: normal at Thursday, July 01 2021 12:01 AM (LADmw)

2 "Might even run Windows 11."

Just hope you don't have a hardware failure.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 01 2021 01:51 AM (eqaFC)

3 "After some users analyzed the device's logs, they found that on June 24th, a script called factoryRestore.sh was executed on their devices, which wiped the device's files."
JWZ calls the Cloud the Clown.  At times like this, he's not wrong.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 01 2021 01:53 AM (eqaFC)

4 I hope I don't sound insane, but:  how about a secure IPX/SPX stack running encapsulated for your stupid IOT crap?  TCP/IP was designed to be insecure, and all the security crap is a bandage*.  There are reasonably designed protocols out there that can be secure without breaking the Internet.  And, let's be honest, your personal network attached hard-drive does not need to be "on the Internet" (in the real sense of being routable over the Internet).

*oh, but I can have all communications securely encrypted with a signed key.  Ok, who is the signing authority?  Oh, it's some chinese company . . . Yeah no.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, July 01 2021 10:32 AM (obo9H)

5 First time I've see that greying out I've dubbed "Gamma Crash" on a YouTube video. Happens in the Gate OP there at around 0:57...

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, July 01 2021 10:42 AM (Ix1l6)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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