Author Archives: pappp

Microsoft adds and fixes remote code execution vulnerability in Notepad

Posted on 2026-02-11 by pappp

Source: OSNews

Article note: ... Y'all. The shovelware to sell services and coerce user behavior to hit metrics, promotion driven development bloat and creep, and general not giving a fuck slopcoding landed an RCE in an automatic update to a 40 year old text editor in the default system image. Windows as a platform was closer to "done" in 2010 than it has been since. The structural incentive that commercial software can never be done is a huge problem that keeps computing tools perpetually immature.

What happens when you slopcode a bunch of bloat to your basic text editor? Well, you add a remote code execution vulnerability to notepad.exe.

Improper neutralization of special elements used in a command (‘command injection’) in Windows Notepad App allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network.

[…]

An attacker could trick a user into clicking a malicious link inside a Markdown file opened in Notepad, causing the application to launch unverified protocols that load and execute remote files.

↫ CVE-2026-20841

I don’t know how many more obvious examples one needs to understand that Microsoft simply does not care, in any way, shape, or form, about Windows. A lot of people seem very hesitant to accept that with even LinkedIn generating more revenue for Microsoft than Windows, the writing is on the wall.

Anyway, the fix has been released through the Microsoft Store.

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How Did the FBI Get Nancy Guthrie’s Nest Doorbell Footage?

Posted on 2026-02-11 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: The Private Panopticon situation is really absurd beyond even Fahrenheit 451 view-screen imaginings. Private businesses roll out surveillance networks paid for by the people surveilled (or their neighbors), then sell the information gathered to any interested parties... including the government, who get to end-run any sort of 4th amendment rights for free by shaking it out of the private businesses via 3rd party doctrine.
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How Did the FBI Get Nancy Guthrie’s Nest Doorbell Footage?

Posted on 2026-02-11 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: The Private Panopticon situation is really absurd beyond even Fahrenheit 451 view-screen imaginings. Private businesses roll out surveillance networks paid for by the people surveilled (or their neighbors), then sell the information gathered to any interested parties... including the government, who get to end-run any sort of 4th amendment rights for free by shaking it out of the private businesses via 3rd party doctrine.
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The Day the Telnet Died

Posted on 2026-02-10 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Holy shit, there was is an 11 year old unathenticated remote root shell bug in gnu telnetd, and preceding the disclosure, at least one tier 1 carrier in the US started just fuckin dropping traffic on port 23, causing a massive drop to like 1/3 of previous average global traffic. ...It's probably not an unreasonable policy, if you're exposing telnet to the Internet in 2026, you're either doing retro shit, or more likely at the intersection of a terrible network configuration decision and some Internet of Shit gadget that hasn't been patched since the buildroot used to generate the image was cloned 18mo before the product hit the market.
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Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

Posted on 2026-02-09 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: No one should give any sort of ID documents to a company that recently got in trouble for ineptly leaking 70k ID documents, no matter what pearl clutching is accompanying it. Also, fuck Discord as the biggest destroyer of knowledge and community on the Internet. An attractive nuisance to replace nice indexable, searchable forums and wikis and standard IRC with... proprietary IRC.
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Texas Instruments Acquiring Silicon Labs for $7.5 Billion

Posted on 2026-02-04 by pappp

Source: adafruit industries blog

Article note: Consolidation continues. This is a reasonably logical pair, both in Austin, and TI and SiLabs both specialize in power electronics, protocol adapters, and crusty microcontrollers.

Texas Instruments logo on the left and Silicon Labs logo on the right, representing the announced $7.5 billion acquisition.

The semiconductor consolidation train keeps rolling. CHOO CHOO … Texas Instruments announced it’s acquiring Silicon Labs for $7.5 billion in cash. That’s $231 per share for anyone who keeps track of that.

Silicon Labs has been a major player in wireless connectivity, making the chips that power a huge chunk of the IoT world: Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Matter-enabled devices. If you’ve built a smart home gadget or played with wireless dev boards, there’s a good chance Silicon Labs silicon was involved.

TI’s press release goo is the usual consolidation “synergies” speak (promising $450 million worth, which historically translates to layoffs), “scale,” and “better serving customers.” Both companies are Austin-based, so at least the commute won’t change for whoever’s left after, we hope they keep Silicon Labs weird, they’ve always had some cool radio chips.

For makers and engineers, the real question is what happens to Silicon Labs’ developer ecosystem. Their dev boards, documentation, and community support have been solid. TI has a mixed track record there.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval. We’ll be watching to see if this means better availability and pricing, or just another logo swap on the datasheet. TI is not the worst company, and nowadays that’s the best you can hope for.

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Slopaganda: AI images posted by the White House and what they teach us

Posted on 2026-01-29 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: "Slopaganda" is a natural phrase I'm hoping catches.
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SpaceX in Merger Talks with xAI

Posted on 2026-01-29 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Paraphrasing the cleverest shit-talkers in the thread, this negotiation requires two socks, two pairs of googly eyes, and one dude in a K-hole talking to himself. But seriously, this kind of shell game shuffling debt around to stay ahead of bullshit would get scrutiny from a non-complicit SEC.
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Albania Created an ‘A.I. Minister’ to Curb Corruption. Then Its Developers Were Accused of Graft.

Posted on 2026-01-27 by pappp

Source: NYT > World

Article note: Seems like a microcosm of the whole AI industry. The corruption detection AI is simply a tool of corruption operated by its vendor.

The Albanian avatar known as Diella, a public anticorruption crusader, has been described as the world’s first government minister created by artificial intelligence.

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Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor

Posted on 2026-01-27 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Neat. I've been off XFCE as my default environment for almost a decade because of creeping GTK misfeatures, but they've always had a good design philosophy, and this xfwl4 project seems to be in keeping.
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