Miscellaneous Tech News
-
-
Animal Crossing removed from sale in China amid Hong Kong protests
The Nintendo Switch's current best-selling game has been removed from Chinese online stores after activists used it to criticise the state.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons lets players customise their own island and invite others to visit. Some players in Hong Kong have used the platform to stage protests. Players in mainland China had previously been able to buy foreign editions of the title from online marketplaces. The country's censors strictly regulate video games and had yet to approve the title's formal release in the country. Now, even local sites which had advertised imported copies have removed the listings. -
Coronavirus: Apple tracks changes in travel behaviour
Apple has launched a tool that reveals changes in the travel behaviour of people who use its Maps app.
The Mobility Trends Report produces three daily percentage figures, showing how many fewer people are driving, walking and using public transport compared with on 13 January, before the coronavirus lockdowns came into effect. It covers major cities and national figures for 63 countries. Hong Kong is included but not mainland China. It follows a similar effort by Google. Google's Covid-19 Community Mobility reports are arguably more detailed - they cover 130 countries and also report on how busy different types of location are - however, the search firm has only provided such data for two dates since its launch on 3 April. -
Coronavirus: NHS contact tracing app to target 80% of smartphone users
A contact-tracing app could help stop the coronavirus pandemic, but 80% of current smartphone owners would need to use it, say experts advising the NHS.
The University of Oxford's Big Data Institute has modelled a city of one million people to simulate the software's impact. If there is lower uptake, academics say the app would still help slow the spread of Covid-19. They add that letting people self-diagnose the illness could be critical. That means users would only have to answer an on-screen questionnaire before being judged to be at significant risk of infection. They would not have to speak to a health advisor or wait for a medical test result. -
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/bluejeans-bought-by-verizon-for-less-than-800m-546826
BlueJeans bought by Verizon for less than $800m
(~$500million USD)EDIT: Also here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/16/verizon_business_acquires_bluejeans/
-
Family-Friendly Cloudflare DNS
Introduced about two weeks ago, Cloudflare now offers a family friendly DNS resolver.
https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/1.1.1.1-for-families/Basically you use it by pointing to 1.1.1.2 for protection from malware-serving websites or 1.1.1.3 for malware and adult content protection.
They're going to add some customization options as well in the coming months.
-
-
Coronavirus: EU and Australian tracing apps 'ready in weeks'
Coronavirus contact-tracing apps will be rolled out in Europe and Australia in the next two to four weeks, officials say.
Germany's health minister Jens Spahn said his country's app would be ready to download in three to four weeks. Meanwhile, Australia and Denmark plan to push out apps within two weeks. Australian prime minister Scott Morrison said using the app would be voluntary to begin with - but he did not rule out making it compulsory. Contact-tracing apps are being developed by several countries around the world. They typically use Bluetooth or satellite location data to record who a person has been in close proximity to. That information can then be used to notify app-users if someone they have met becomes ill with Covid-19, and declares their status in the app. -
-
Buyer beware—that 2TB-6TB “NAS” drive you’ve been eyeing might be SMR
Storage vendors, including but reportedly not limited to Western Digital, have quietly begun shipping SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) disks in place of earlier CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) disks. -
-
@nadnerB said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Interesting read:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/understanding-raid-how-performance-scales-from-one-disk-to-eight/Some of the info in it is a decade out of date, though. They've not kept up with RAID tech even from the 2000s. And they mention features of hardware RAID that are just as much available in software RAID which they incorrectly call kernel RAID.
-
-
@Danp said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
"On Friday, Cognizant began emailing their clients, stating that they had been compromised and included a "preliminary list of indicators of compromise identified through our investigation." Clients could then use this information to monitor their systems and further secure them."
Um, isn't that Cognizant's job?
-
@nadnerB said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Interesting read:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/understanding-raid-how-performance-scales-from-one-disk-to-eight/It was interesting. I don't have near as much a problem with using raid 0 though. Ive used it for years on my workstations. Never had it fail. I do have everything I care about synced online and to my nas at home so i think Im prepared if it does.
-
Why are there doubts over contact-tracing apps?
There are growing tensions over the best approach to coronavirus contact-tracing apps and whether or not the technology can live up to its promise.
Smartphone software is being developed to alert users when someone they were recently near becomes infected. But the Ada Lovelace Institute has said there is "an absence of evidence" such tools are practical, accurate or technically capable. Others stress the initiative must be backed up by an army of human checkers. To further complicate matters, a schism has emerged among technologists working together to develop a pan-Europe solution. And hundreds of scientists and researchers have signed a statement warning "mission creep" could eventually lead to "unprecedented surveillance of society at large". -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Why are there doubts over contact-tracing apps?
There are growing tensions over the best approach to coronavirus contact-tracing apps and whether or not the technology can live up to its promise.
Smartphone software is being developed to alert users when someone they were recently near becomes infected. But the Ada Lovelace Institute has said there is "an absence of evidence" such tools are practical, accurate or technically capable. Others stress the initiative must be backed up by an army of human checkers. To further complicate matters, a schism has emerged among technologists working together to develop a pan-Europe solution. And hundreds of scientists and researchers have signed a statement warning "mission creep" could eventually lead to "unprecedented surveillance of society at large".Is the question at the top for real? the end portion that's quoted is why!
-
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Is the question at the top for real?
You often ask a question in that way to explain what you are about to explain.
-
DForce hacker returns $25m in 'stolen' crypto-currencies
A mystery hacker allegedly stole $25m (£20m) in crypto-currencies - and then returned the funds two days later.
Records show that funds in a variety of crypto-currencies were withdrawn from the DForce platform based in China. A sum of $10m was taken in Ethereum, for example, while a further $10m was taken in digital coins tied to the US dollar and $4m in other coins. Roughly the same amount has now been returned - although in a different mix of crypto-currencies. DForce is an online service that allows users to make crypto-currency transactions with one another. -
Coronavirus: Apple and France in stand-off over contact-tracing app
France is pressing Apple to let its forthcoming coronavirus contract-tracing app work in the background on iPhones without building in the privacy measures the US company wants.
The country's digital minister confirmed the request in an interview given to Bloomberg. France's system would let it glean more information about participating smartphone owners than Apple and its partner Google want to allow. Privacy experts view it as a test case. "Apple has no reason to agree to this demand and it would open the door to many other requests from other countries and entities," Prof Olivier Blazy from the country's University of Limoges, told BBC News. "As a Frenchman, I think it would be useful to avoid being dependent on the Google-Apple solution but I think it's strange that the government strategy relies on trying to convince Apple to do something that is against its interest, with no incentive to do so."
