Article note: I have a whole meme-media library in my head that goes off when I read about IoT bullshit being bullshit.
The "You plugged it in to the phone didn't you, if you screw up again you won't get into college" bit from the beginning of Hackers, the explaining no networked computers bit from the new/rdj/2004/good Galactica, and James Mickens' "Not Even Close: The State of Computer Security" NDC talk from NDC 2015, specifically "all the membranes beast" from the "YOUR HOUSE ON INTERNET OF THINGS" slide. All playing at once. Every time I read about another piece of garbage that shouldn't have an external network connection, but does because fuck you.
Enlarge/ Eufy's camera footage is stored locally, but with the right URL, you can also watch it from anywhere, unencrypted. It's complicated.
When security researchers found that Eufy's supposedly cloud-free cameras were uploading thumbnails with facial data to cloud servers, Eufy's response was that it was a misunderstanding, a failure to disclose an aspect of its mobile notification system to customers.
It seems there's more understanding now, and it's not good.
Article note: Oh, bummer, he's done really good things for the clerk's office communicating in media people actually use.
I hope his counter-obligations aren't grim.
Don Blevins Jr., candidate for Fayette County Clerk, poses for a portrait at the Lexington Herald-Leader on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022.
Article note: Oh neat, modern notes for Soul of a New Machine.
It's a little weird in modern times, but a delightful read of the history of the culture.
Article note: That's a delightful dumb hack.
It's properly "MacOnLinux on Linux on a hacked Wii" which isn't exactly native, but since it's a PPC750 it's native-ish.
How has this seemingly impossible task been achieved? Seasoned Mac enthusiasts will remember the days when Apple machines used PowerPC processors, and the Wii uses a PowerPC chip that’s a close cousin of those used in the Mac G3 series of computers. Since the Wii can run a Linux-based OS, it can therefore run Mac-on-Linux, providing in theory an environment in which it can host one of the PowerPC versions of MacOS.
So it’s not really running MacOS 9.2.2 directly on the hardware, but it’s close enough. Impressive work.
Article note: I'm kind of excited to see how people are going to hack the unlock scheme for CPU features. Both because the hack will be technically interesting, and because it might bring about an era like the Celeron 300A in the late 90s where the hobbyists buy a chip from "the wrong market segment" because it has _potential_.
Randhir Thakur led Intel’s big bet to take on Asian foundry giants TSMC and Samsung
Exclusive The head of Intel's revitalized contract chip manufacturing business plans to step down, The Register has learned, creating a setback for the x86 behemoth's big bet to take on Asian foundry giants TSMC and Samsung as part of its comeback plan.…
Article note: Voice Assistants/Voice Control are an attractive nuisance for tech companies, and have been into at least the 80s. They have quite limited application, and they can only be monetized by making them horrible for the user. I've been hoping the "useful subset" of simple tools that are basically handsfree basic control (dialer, calculator, media player type things) and TTS tool that can read notifications will get eaten by simple local features, and it will squeeze out the fancy "Hey, wiretap, what's a recipe for pancakes?" shit. This is a promising development in that direction.
Enlarge/ The fourth-generation Echo device is a cloth-covered sphere with a halo at the base, contrasting with the squat plastic cylinders of earlier-generation Echoes. (credit: Amazon)
Amazon is going through the biggest layoffs in the company's history right now, with a plan to eliminate some 10,000 jobs. One of the areas hit hardest is the Amazon Alexa voice assistant unit, which is apparently falling out of favor at the e-commerce giant. That's according to a report from Business Insider, which details "the swift downfall of the voice assistant and Amazon's larger hardware division."
Alexa has been around for 10 years and has been a trailblazing voice assistant that was copied quite a bit by Google and Apple. Alexa never managed to create an ongoing revenue stream, though, so Alexa doesn't really make any money. The Alexa division is part of the "Worldwide Digital" group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with "the vast majority" of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year. It sounds like Amazon is tired of burning through all that cash.
A division in crisis
The BI report spoke with "a dozen current and former employees on the company's hardware team," who described "a division in crisis." Just about every plan to monetize Alexa has failed, with one former employee calling Alexa "a colossal failure of imagination," and "a wasted opportunity." This month's layoffs are the end result of years of trying to turn things around. Alexa was given a huge runway at the company, back when it was reportedly the "pet project" of former CEO Jeff Bezos. An all-hands crisis meeting took place in 2019 to try to turn the monetization problem around, but that was fruitless. By late 2019, Alexa saw a hiring freeze, and Bezos started to lose interest in the project around 2020. Of course, Amazon now has an entirely new CEO, Andy Jassy, who apparently isn't as interested in protecting Alexa.
While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible.
