Matthew Green, a cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University, writes: The Internet is a dangerous place in the best of times. Sometimes Internet engineers find ways to mitigate the worst of these threats, and sometimes they fail. Every now and then, however, a major Internet company finds a solution that actually makes the situation worse for just about everyone. Today…
Tag: OK
No, the New MacBook Air is Not Faster Than 98% of PC Laptops
Gordon Mah Ung, writing at PC World: Let me just say it outloud, OK? Apple is full of it. I’m referring to Apple’s claim that its fanless, Arm-based MacBook Air is “faster than 98 percent of PC laptops.” Yes, you read that correctly: Apple officials literally claimed that the new MacBook Air using Apple’s custom M1 chip is faster than 98…
Drivers Sue Uber Over Pressure To Support Prop 22
Uber drivers say the company unlawfully pressured them to support a ballot initiative that would make gig workers independent contractors, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court by a proposed class of California drivers. Bloomberg Law reports: The suit alleges Uber used a coercive campaign of misinformation to exert pressure on drivers to advocate and vote for…
Microsoft Forces Windows 10 Restarts — To Install ‘Unsolicited, Unwanted’ Office Apps
The Verge’s senior news editor complains that without permission, Windows 10 restarted to install “unsolicited, unwanted web app versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook onto my computer.”
OK, it’s not as bad as when my entire computer screen got taken over by an unwanted copy of Microsoft Edge. That was truly egregious. No, this time Microsoft is merely sneaking unwanted web…
Linux 5.9 Boosts CPU Performance With FSGSBASE Support
FSGSBASE support in Linux “has the possibility of helping Intel/AMD CPU performance especially in areas like context switching that had been hurt badly by Spectre/Meltdown and other CPU vulnerability mitigations largely on the Intel side,” Phoronix wrote back in August. As it started its journey into the kernel, they provided a preview on August 10: The FSGSBASE support that was finally…
He Called it a ‘Scamdemic’ – Then Saw His Family Getting Sick
A remarkable first-person story in today’s Washington Post: I used to call it the “scamdemic.” I thought it was an overblown media hoax. I made fun of people for wearing masks. I went all the way down the rabbit hole and fell hard on my own sword, so if you want to hate me or blame me, that’s fine. I’m doing…
Are the Best Star Wars Stories Now in Games Like ‘Star Wars: Squadrons’?
A game critic for the Los Angeles Times remembers his reaction to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. “What a disappointment — if only it had been built for video game consoles.” This leads to this epiphany:
For all the deserved attention “The Mandalorian” series on Disney+ has received, the just-released game “Star Wars: Squadrons” reminds us that some of the best…
Twitter Says You Cannot Tweet That You Hope Trump Dies From COVID-19
Twitter told Motherboard that it will suspend people who openly hope Trump dies from the coronavirus, which he recently tested positive for and, as a result, was moved to Walter Reed hospital “out of an abundance of caution.” Twitter referred to an “abusive behavior” rule that’s been on the books since April. From the report: “Content that wishes, hopes or expresses…
Trump Blew Up More Than Just TikTok and WeChat
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to ban dealings with ByteDance, owner of video-sharing sensation TikTok, appears to codify what his administration has already been warning. A second edict targeting messaging app WeChat and its parent, Tencent, seems weirdly overdue. The executive orders issued by the White House go beyond stopping average Americans from…
Is Slashdot the Answer to Facebook’s Fake News Problem?
David Collier-Brown led the Sun Microsystems Canada team specializing in performance and capacity planning. He later becoming a consulting systems programmer and performance engineer, as well as an O’Reilly author (co-authoring the 2003 book Using Samba). He’s also davecb, Slashdot reader #6,526, and today submitted a story headlined “Slashdot is the answer to Facebook’s ‘fake news’ problem.” “OK, not the whole…