Category Archives: News

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Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Oh, huh, Siemens did eat Hackaday and Tindie. That's a weird combination. Maybe they won't fuck it up.
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Google is officially releasing its Fuchsia OS, starting with first-gen Nest Hub

Source: OSNews

Article note: Neat, at lest in the "Modern high-seperation microkernel mature enough to use in real products" sense.

Google’s long-in-development, from-scratch operating system, Fuchsia, is now running on real Made by Google devices, namely, the first-generation Nest Hub.

Google has told us that as of today, an update is beginning to roll out to owners of the first-generation Nest Hub, first released in 2018. For all intents and purposes, this update will not change any of the functionality of the Nest Hub, but under the hood, the smart display will be running Fuchsia OS instead of the Linux-based “Cast OS” it used before. In fact, your experience with the Nest Hub should be essentially identical. This is possible because Google’s smart display experience is built with Flutter, which is designed to consistently bring apps to multiple platforms, Fuchsia included.

A big moment for the Fuchsia team, and the culmination of years and years of work. Google is clearly testing the waters here, allowing the brand new operating system to get some experience under its belt in a relatively controlled environment. Theoretically, Google could do the same transparent rollout on Android devices, since Fuchsia can run Android applications just fine – users wouldn’t even notice. However, I’m sure that is still a few years away.

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Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Ooh! Someone rigged a modern one. I do bad things with tomsrtbt or NetBSD 5 (last with a small floppy set) or the like occasionally, and always think it would be nice to have something more recent for that kind of task.
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A new replication crisis: Research that is less likely to be true is cited more

Source: Hacker News

Article note: So, the feeling that hype-compliant splashy bullshit is more rewarded than quality research is ...probably actually true.
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Chrome testing RSS-powered ‘Follow’ button

Source: Hacker News

Article note: ...If it props up the RSS ecosystem, I'm not complaining. It's not a way I'd use feeds, but it's not a bad idea.
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I’m leaving Freenode for a new network

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Man, freenode has been a constant without too much drama for decades. I haven't been real active in long enough that I have no idea what the situation is, but enough of the old guard leadership are bailing that it can't be good. At least it's an open protocol and tooling so everyone can just move.
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Adding a Russian Keyboard to Protect against Ransomware

Source: Schneier on Security

Article note: That's hilarious, clever, and a little cynical.

A lot of Russian malware — the malware that targeted the Colonial Pipeline, for example — won’t install on computers with a Cyrillic keyboard installed. Brian Krebs wonders if this could be a useful defense:

In Russia, for example, authorities there generally will not initiate a cybercrime investigation against one of their own unless a company or individual within the country’s borders files an official complaint as a victim. Ensuring that no affiliates can produce victims in their own countries is the easiest way for these criminals to stay off the radar of domestic law enforcement agencies.

[…]

DarkSide, like a great many other malware strains, has a hard-coded do-not-install list of countries which are the principal members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — former Soviet satellites that mostly have favorable relations with the Kremlin.

[…]

Simply put, countless malware strains will check for the presence of one of these languages on the system, and if they’re detected the malware will exit and fail to install.

[…]

Will installing one of these languages keep your Windows computer safe from all malware? Absolutely not. There is plenty of malware that doesn’t care where in the world you are. And there is no substitute for adopting a defense-in-depth posture, and avoiding risky behaviors online.

But is there really a downside to taking this simple, free, prophylactic approach? None that I can see, other than perhaps a sinking feeling of capitulation. The worst that could happen is that you accidentally toggle the language settings and all your menu options are in Russian.

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Recovering “lost” treasure-filled floppy discs with an oscilloscope

Source: Hacker News

Article note: This is super cool. I've been thinking I should pick up a FluxEngine or one of the later Greaseweazle variants to ease dealing with my pile of ancient hardware, but this goes well past.
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The man who didn’t invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

Source: Hacker News

Article note: That is some impressive bullshitting/ladder climbing feedback loop. Like a staggering but unsurprising faction of such things.
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Mac the Knife

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Oooh, MAME is getting some serious work to make its Mac cores usable.
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