Miscellaneous Tech News
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Sun sets on Reddit Secret Santa
Reddit is "sunsetting" its annual Secret Santa gift exchange and Reddit Gifts, with this year's being the last.
The service allowed verified Reddit users to send a £20 gift to another randomly selected user. Celebrities such as SnoopDogg and Bill Gates participated in the secret seasonal exchange. Users have reacted angrily to the decision, which Reddit says is needed to focus on "user experience". One called it a "war on Christmas". Another popular post described the company's announcement as: "Translation - we weren't making enough money off this to be worth our time & effort". The Reddit tradition has seen more than 1.7 million gifts sent. Noteworthy presents have included a horned helmet from Bill Gates, a drawing of a cat by Arnold Schwarzenegger and embroidered slippers from SnoopDogg. -
D***** Ohio, municipal broadband are the only outstanding options in the state. You better not ban it!
https://www.govtech.com/policy/ohio-senate-republicans-move-to-bar-municipal-broadband
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@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
D***** Ohio, municipal broadband are the only outstanding options in the state. You better not ban it!
https://www.govtech.com/policy/ohio-senate-republicans-move-to-bar-municipal-broadband
Of course they'll try and ban it, anything to help suppress the vote. Register to vote by online registration, nah... you can go to the DMV and wait in line for hours etc.
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@dustinb3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
D***** Ohio, municipal broadband are the only outstanding options in the state. You better not ban it!
https://www.govtech.com/policy/ohio-senate-republicans-move-to-bar-municipal-broadband
Of course they'll try and ban it, anything to help suppress the vote. Register to vote by online registration, nah... you can go to the DMV and wait in line for hours etc.
The Senator reported to be resisting the stupid is a Republican believe it or not.
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https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/15/debian_cinnamon_maintainer_quits/
Cinnamon maintainer for Debian leaves to use KDE.
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Teams vulnerability exposed user data.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Teams vulnerability exposed user data.
Who would use teams on a personal computer.... eww the hackers can have my company data
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Teams vulnerability exposed user data.
Tons of vulnerabilities expose user data.
Key here in my mind is
Limitations
However, Grant pointed out, the malicious actor would have to be a member of the Microsoft Teams organization that they are attacking, meaning it would only work in the context of an insider threat attack.
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@dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Teams vulnerability exposed user data.
Tons of vulnerabilities expose user data.
Key here in my mind is
Limitations
However, Grant pointed out, the malicious actor would have to be a member of the Microsoft Teams organization that they are attacking, meaning it would only work in the context of an insider threat attack.
This concept is fundamentally flawed as an attacker could easily setup an account within the tenant, and makes it seem as though this is only vulnerable to bad actors with the organization who otherwise are supposed to "be there".
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@dustinb3403 which is still not just a Microsoft thing, any other platform can have this happen but yes it is a vulnerability but lets not make it so bad like we haven't seen it before.
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Lina Khan: The 32-year-old taking on Big Tech
On Tuesday, 32-year-old Lina Khan was sworn in as chair of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The role is a hugely powerful one, which protects consumers from bad business practices and companies from unfair competition. And when it comes to unfair competition, there is one sector that has been singled out by Democrats and Republicans alike: Big Tech. Worryingly for technology giants, Ms Khan has been one of their most vocal critics. Ms Khan was born in the UK and moved to the US as a child. In an interview with BBC Hardtalk in January, she talked about how she started getting interested in competition law as a policy researcher after graduating. -
The relatives frozen in time on Google Street View
Social-media users are sharing Google Street View images featuring friends and relatives who have since died.
It was sparked by a post on the Twitter account Fesshole, which asks followers to submit anonymous confessions - many of which are explicit. The original poster said they had searched the map platform for images taken before their father had died. Launched in the US in 2007, Google Street View has since rolled out worldwide. The BBC's Neil Henderson shared an image of his late father at his front door. "I have literally hundreds of pics of my dad but the Google Street View is quite affecting, like he's still around," he wrote. Another tweeter showed an image of a couple holding hands in the street - his parents, he said, who had died several years ago. -
Microsoft’s Linux repositories were down for 18+ hours
The outage prevented Linux installation or upgrade of any Microsoft software.
Yesterday, packages.microsoft.com—the repository from which Microsoft serves software installers for Linux distributions including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and more—went down hard, and it stayed down for around 18 hours. The outage impacted users trying to install .NET Core, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SQL Server for Linux (yes, that's a thing) and more—as well as Azure's own devops pipelines. We first became aware of the problem Wednesday evening when we saw 404 errors in the output of apt update on an Ubuntu workstation with Microsoft Teams installed. The outage is somewhat better-documented at this .NET Core issue report on Github, with many users from all around the world sharing their experiences and theories. -
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Facebook tests ads in virtual reality headsets
Facebook has begun displaying ads in its Oculus virtual reality headsets, despite the founder of the platform saying it would never do so.
In what the social network described as an experiment, ads will begin to appear in a game called Balston with other developers rolling out similar ads. It said it would listen to feedback before launching virtual reality ads more widely. It also revealed it is testing new ad formats "that are unique to VR". In 2017, shortly after Facebook bought Oculus, creator Palmer Luckey told the Next Web: "We are not going to track you, flash ads at you, or do anything invasive." But in a blog on Oculus's website, the firm said: "We're exploring new ways for developers to generate revenue - this is a key part of ensuring we're creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences." Users will be able to hide specific ads or those from a certain advertiser and Facebook promised that its privacy policy would remain the same. "Facebook will get new information, like whether you interacted with an ad, and if so, how... for example, if you clicked on the ad for more information or if you hid the ad." It encourages customers to share their feedback via the Oculus support page. -
@mlnews time to move to Steam Index for sure!
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Facebook tests ads in virtual reality headsets
Facebook has begun displaying ads in its Oculus virtual reality headsets, despite the founder of the platform saying it would never do so.
In what the social network described as an experiment, ads will begin to appear in a game called Balston with other developers rolling out similar ads. It said it would listen to feedback before launching virtual reality ads more widely. It also revealed it is testing new ad formats "that are unique to VR". In 2017, shortly after Facebook bought Oculus, creator Palmer Luckey told the Next Web: "We are not going to track you, flash ads at you, or do anything invasive." But in a blog on Oculus's website, the firm said: "We're exploring new ways for developers to generate revenue - this is a key part of ensuring we're creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences." Users will be able to hide specific ads or those from a certain advertiser and Facebook promised that its privacy policy would remain the same. "Facebook will get new information, like whether you interacted with an ad, and if so, how... for example, if you clicked on the ad for more information or if you hid the ad." It encourages customers to share their feedback via the Oculus support page.If they're going to start doing that, then the prices of apps in the Oculus store need to come down a good bit -- not that I actually expect them to!
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Facebook tests ads in virtual reality headsets
Facebook has begun displaying ads in its Oculus virtual reality headsets, despite the founder of the platform saying it would never do so.
In what the social network described as an experiment, ads will begin to appear in a game called Balston with other developers rolling out similar ads. It said it would listen to feedback before launching virtual reality ads more widely. It also revealed it is testing new ad formats "that are unique to VR". In 2017, shortly after Facebook bought Oculus, creator Palmer Luckey told the Next Web: "We are not going to track you, flash ads at you, or do anything invasive." But in a blog on Oculus's website, the firm said: "We're exploring new ways for developers to generate revenue - this is a key part of ensuring we're creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences." Users will be able to hide specific ads or those from a certain advertiser and Facebook promised that its privacy policy would remain the same. "Facebook will get new information, like whether you interacted with an ad, and if so, how... for example, if you clicked on the ad for more information or if you hid the ad." It encourages customers to share their feedback via the Oculus support page.Great... so they're reducing it to another ad slinging paltform.
I guess that's all FB is. A place to go to see ads and maybe argue with strangers. -
@dafyre said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Facebook tests ads in virtual reality headsets
Facebook has begun displaying ads in its Oculus virtual reality headsets, despite the founder of the platform saying it would never do so.
In what the social network described as an experiment, ads will begin to appear in a game called Balston with other developers rolling out similar ads. It said it would listen to feedback before launching virtual reality ads more widely. It also revealed it is testing new ad formats "that are unique to VR". In 2017, shortly after Facebook bought Oculus, creator Palmer Luckey told the Next Web: "We are not going to track you, flash ads at you, or do anything invasive." But in a blog on Oculus's website, the firm said: "We're exploring new ways for developers to generate revenue - this is a key part of ensuring we're creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences." Users will be able to hide specific ads or those from a certain advertiser and Facebook promised that its privacy policy would remain the same. "Facebook will get new information, like whether you interacted with an ad, and if so, how... for example, if you clicked on the ad for more information or if you hid the ad." It encourages customers to share their feedback via the Oculus support page.If they're going to start doing that, then the prices of apps in the Oculus store need to come down a good bit -- not that I actually expect them to!
What SHOULD happen is people start buying something else. Vote with your wallet, it's the only real voice you have. If you buy an Oculus now, you are voting with your wallet that you want the ads.
