Tech Related Coronavirus News
Authors upset at the Internet Archive’s unshackling of controlled digital lending
Apple buys popular weather app & API, Dark Sky
Have you implemented an automated backup system that adheres to the 3-2-1 rule?
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NBN Co, Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, TPG and Vocus have got the ACCC's blessing to make a working group to jointly implement "unusual traffic management and capacity optimisation techniques" to keep the internet chugging whilst their networks are under heavy load.
Xerox has given up buying HP Inc (the printers and computer PCs and shit like that) for US$35b due to coronavirus's impact on the economy. HP never really wanted to sell so for them this is good news.
Zoom's going around saying their video chats are "end to end" encrypted, but they aren't and to do so at the scale Zoom does it would be kinda tricky. Just the bits between the client and Zoom's server are encrypted.
Amazon sacked a a warehouse worker who led a strike against their shitty conditions after he got coronavirus. There's a lot of conjecture around the circumstances of the firing but talk about bad optics, damn.
Apple software developers Omni Group had to lay off about 10 staff as sales of indie software have dropped as the economy dives into the shitter.
The annual gathering for fans of Quake, QuakeCon, has been cancelled due to the pandemic. First time since it started 25 years ago that it won't be happening.
The Internet Archive uses "controlled digital lending", which is basically DRM applied to a PDF, so that they don't loan out more digital copies of the book than they have physical copies of. Libraries across the world are closed due to coronavirus, so the IA decided to remove that restriction and allow unlimited copies of a digital book to be loaned out until the end of June or whenever this coronavirus stuff calms down. Unfortunately, some authors have cracked the shits that their work has been unchained and they won't get paid their few cents each time someone checks the book out. Will be interesting to see how the copyright cartel fights this one, if they fight it at all.
Popular weather app Dark Sky has been acquired by Apple. It's one of the classiest weather apps and even has an API for other weather services to take advantage of (Carrot Weather & Duck Duck Go use it for example). The iOS app is still on the store and the API will continue to operate until 2021. It's also available on Android, but that will be dying on July 1st. Will be interesting to see what Apple does with this. Will they juice up the built-in weather app? Is it purely for the quite excellent API? Will they resell the API to others? Or will it be placed in a dark room never to be seen again like most of Apple's acquisitions?
Today is world backup day! As someone who is still sore after losing years of digital photos (I wiped the HDD of a laptop I was selling before giving it to the new owner and I forgot to copy across my iPhoto library), I take backups pretty damn seriously now. My go-to app for backups is Arq, which works on Mac & Windows. I have it set to dump most of the files on my computers to a separate backups-only NAS (an old 2-bay Synology) over SSH and the important bits of my home directories to Backblaze's B2 cloud service every hour. On my primary computer (iMac Pro) I also run Carbon Copy Cloner to do a full disk image to a bootable external SSD every night. It's very easy to set up and meets the crucial 3-2-1 rule.
SitePoint has made their Premium subscription package of web dev learning materials free for anyone with a .edu.au email address until the end of 2020
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