Miscellaneous Tech News
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Microsoft’s new Secured-core PC initiative short circuits firmware attacks
Secured-core extends the root of trust past the boot environment itself.
Microsoft on Tuesday announced a new hardware security initiative, dubbed Secured-core PC. The short version of what "Secured-core PC" really means is a defense against attacks at the firmware layer. Although actual firmware-based attacks have been relatively uncommon in the field so far, they represent a particularly nasty avenue of exploitation for an advanced, persistent attacker. Once a machine's firmware is compromised, the exploit is persistent across reboots, operating-system re-installations, and even full hard drive replacement. As operating systems themselves become more secure and difficult to compromise and keep compromised, the value of pivoting from a shell to the firmware layer in order to enhance persistence also increases. Even detection of compromised firmware is problematic, since Windows Defender and other antivirus applications run at the operating-system level and don't necessarily have direct access to the firmware. -
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@dbeato said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
At least the article goes on to say a Director with a company CC is who would be buying these licenses, so likely someone on that Directors staff would be managing these licenses, not each person individually.
Basically MS is promoting "Shadow IT", which is in MS' benefit, but is not in a business' benefit. Shows how far MS has fallen from being a business focused company.
Yep, this is what the thread on SW was basically saying as well. MS, like so many other companies - don't care about processes, only about profits.
Until someone does this, a lawyer cites MS' "admins can't stop us policy" and sues for MS being complacent, or worse, in data theft and they start looking for people to go to jail.
yeah - the data being in places IT is unaware of, that upper management is unaware of - that's the big issue I've seen since I read about this.
I was discussing it too in SW but some on a thread I was in think it is targeted to business but I believe they are targeting businesses but focusing on the individuals (Like consumers) and the bottom line is more money.
For sure, they are just in a money grab, not considering how this will look in the bigger picture. Simple answer... use your filters and block MS websites.
likely only workable if you are not using any MS services.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@dbeato said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
At least the article goes on to say a Director with a company CC is who would be buying these licenses, so likely someone on that Directors staff would be managing these licenses, not each person individually.
Basically MS is promoting "Shadow IT", which is in MS' benefit, but is not in a business' benefit. Shows how far MS has fallen from being a business focused company.
Yep, this is what the thread on SW was basically saying as well. MS, like so many other companies - don't care about processes, only about profits.
Until someone does this, a lawyer cites MS' "admins can't stop us policy" and sues for MS being complacent, or worse, in data theft and they start looking for people to go to jail.
yeah - the data being in places IT is unaware of, that upper management is unaware of - that's the big issue I've seen since I read about this.
I was discussing it too in SW but some on a thread I was in think it is targeted to business but I believe they are targeting businesses but focusing on the individuals (Like consumers) and the bottom line is more money.
For sure, they are just in a money grab, not considering how this will look in the bigger picture. Simple answer... use your filters and block MS websites.
likely only workable if you are not using any MS services.
Which you'd be heavily encourage not to use after this.
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Firefox 70 brings Enhanced Tracking Protection and longer battery life
Firefox 70 brings users privacy, battery, and performance improvements.
Yesterday, Mozilla released Firefox 70. The newest version of the most-popular fully open source browser expands on the Enhanced Tracking Protection we saw as an option in Firefox 69 and turns that protection on by default for all users. We already saw most of these new features in our Firefox 70 beta coverage, but since then, the features have been expanded upon and fine-tuned, and major new features have appeared or have been added in the Lockwise online password manager for users who have a Firefox cloud account. In addition to automatically generating pseudorandom passwords for you, saving them, and automatically filling out login forms with them, Lockwise continuously scans the Internet for password and database dumps that might contain leaked copies of your credentials. Lockwise does this by comparing a hash of each of your passwords to hashes of the passwords in the dumps and leaks—so you don't have to worry about Mozilla itself, or its employees, "knowing" your password. -
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Microsoft beat expectations with strong Windows revenue, but Xbox had a rough quarter
Surface didn't post good numbers, but that could change in the next quarter.
Microsoft beat analyst expectations in its quarterly earnings report, achieving $33.06 billion in revenue in the start of its first 2020 fiscal quarter (which ended September 30) compared to a projected $32.23 billion. That's a 14% increase over the same quarter the prior year. Much of the growth still came from Azure, the company's ever-expanding cloud-services platform, which saw 59% revenue growth. However, that's down just a little from the previous quarter, which saw 64% growth. Azure and other cloud services saw $10.85 billion in revenue.That's not what disappointed analysts and investors. Most expected a similar figure as Azure's growth slows down quarter by quarter and it achieves greater market saturation. (Amazon's more popular AWS has seen slowing growth lately, too). -
@mlnews Im' not surprised. Xbox doesn't sound like a current product any longer. It's lost mind share in my limited view. It seems like something that quietly faded away. I forget that it's still a thing. Two years ago, that was not the case.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews Im' not surprised. Xbox doesn't sound like a current product any longer. It's lost mind share in my limited view. It seems like something that quietly faded away. I forget that it's still a thing. Two years ago, that was not the case.
oh? so what still has mindspace for you? PS4?
MS is starting the move away from the console - like everything else - they are about to release an online streaming gaming solution, no xBox required.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
oh? so what still has mindspace for you? PS4?
PS4, Switch, phones, PC....
They all seem to get more discussion now.
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Ubunto 19.10 is available for Raspberry Pi now.
https://ubuntu.com/download/iot/raspberry-pi
Install server and then add desktop afterwards. Runs all flavors of ubuntu; lubuntu, xubuntu etc.
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4K projector turns any wall into theater-quality screen from inches away
Vava's 4K projector offers ultra short throw distance and Harman-Kardon speakers.
This is Vava, a 4K definition Ultra Short Throw (UST) home theater projector retailing for $2,700. For those of you not familiar with the term, UST refers to "throw distance"—the amount of space you need between a projector and screen in order to get the desired image size. This projector also features a built-in Harman-Kardon speaker, motion sensors to keep you from blinding yourself by staring into the laser, and plenty of inputs. A few weeks ago, we reviewed Cinemood, a miniature and fairly low-cost portable projector that unfortunately did not really impress us. Vava is the projector we thought we were getting then, and we're happy to report that it impressed us a lot. -
@mlnews man I want one of those!
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews man I want one of those!
That's quite a price tag though...
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews man I want one of those!
Oh, but 25,000 hour lamp life! And lots of lumens! That alone is worth the replacement costs of the bulbs of regular projectors.
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Omg it's 33 lbs! Hahah
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@Obsolesce said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Omg it's 33 lbs! Hahah
It should come with it's own cart!
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@Obsolesce said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Omg it's 33 lbs! Hahah
It weighs 23.8 lbs not 33, check your facts.
I had to dig for that in their documentation- direct download as it's not listed anywhere that I could find in the link or the product page.
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@DustinB3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Obsolesce said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Omg it's 33 lbs! Hahah
It weighs 23.8 lbs not 33, check your facts.
I had to dig for that in their documentation- direct download as it's not listed anywhere that I could find in the link or the product page.
Fuck off @DustinB3403.
I was going by what Amazon said, but who gives a shit.
