I didn't know where else to put this but I wanted to share it. Please enjoy this video of Mark Zuckerberg wakeboarding with an American flag whilst John Denver plays in the background.
A few months ago, Muse Group "acquired" (the lead dev of Audacity gave control of it to Muse Group with the promise of new features and regular updates) the popular open source audio editing software Audacity. Only 2 months in and the new owners have added a shitload of telemetry to the app that the main audience of open source and free software folks really don't like. Audacity now collects "data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities requests", along with the usual blob of computer info that could easily be used to identify you. All this data is of course, shared with basically anyone who wants it according to the privacy policy. Absolutely unnecessary. There will likely be a fork of Audacity without this crap.
It happened again. A software platform called Kaseya, used by managed service providers to look after the IT infrastructure of other businesses, has been hacked and then leveraged to infect customers with ransomware. An automatic update pushed out REvil ransomware to dozens of customers. Kaseya is telling its customers to "immediately shut down their servers to avoid the possibility of being compromised by attackers" while they work on a fix. A supermarket in Sweden had to close 800 stores over the weekend because of it. This is basically the same attack vector and outcome as SolarWinds late last year.
Qualcomm's new CEO is talking up their prospects in making an SoC to challenge Apple's prodigious M1. Cristiano Amon told Reuters that they're going to make an ARM based CPU with a built in 5G modem, which makes sense considering they dropped US$1.4b on a startup called Nuvia in March. That name might not sound familiar and the names of the people who created Nuvia also might not be familiar (Gerard Williams III, Manu Gulati and John Bruno), but they're all ex-Apple and were responsible for the CPUs that lead to the M1. Apple even sued them for taking Apple tech with them and poaching Apple's engineers. God speed to Qualcomm, even if they are ruthless business pricks. Intel has dropped the ball and so someone's gonna compete with Apple and AMD.
Tanner Villarete has re-created a 6th-generation iPod Classic in a web browser out of Javascript, CSS and shitload of SVGs. You can hook it up to your Spotify or Apple Music account and it'll load up songs from your account. It's very accurate to the physical device and impressive technical display that hit me right in the nostalgia. So much so I hit up eBay to try and buy one, but saw that a working 5th-gen (my favourite iPod) is $179! Maybe I'll pop into Cashies and see what nuggets they've got lying around. Or perhaps Apple will see this thinkpiece on The Verge and make an modern iPod with a 24-bit, 192kHz DAC that integrates with Apple Music???
📻 Sunday - Sonic Youth
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.