Daily Tech News 8 May 2021

• One third of Twitter users - on iOS, I believe, since this feature has only been deployed on iOS so far - edited or deleted their tweets after a nag screen told them they were being too mean. (Ars Technica)
  
  The other two thirds shouted "YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM!" and stomped off angrily to their room where they spent the rest of the day griefing wandering traders in Minecraft.
  
  
  
• In slightly brighter news only 4% of iOS users are dumb enough to give web apps permission to track them. (Ars Technica)
  
  Yes, I'd love to see ads for something I already bought splashed across every site I visit for the next month.
  
  Not.

• AMD has desktop APUs - their term for CPUs with integrated graphics - in theory, but in practice only the older, lower-end parts are in stock anywhere. Intel meanwhile has no shortage of desktop CPUs with integrated graphics. Unless you buy an F part, or a high-end i9, all of them have graphics.
  
  But how do they compete? Badly. (AnandTech)
  
  Intel's latest laptop parts - the 11th generation, codenamed Tiger Lake - compete closely with AMD on both CPU and graphics tests, except in heavily multi-threaded workloads where AMD pulls ahead.
  
  But where AMD's scarce desktop APUs have the same graphics cores as their laptop parts, Intel's only have one third - or even one quarter - of the graphics capacity. The resulting performance is not good.
  
  On the third hand, you can actually buy one right now.
  
  
  
• Instead of iPhone, package contained live bobcat. (WCCFTech)
  
  Five stars. Better than I could have hoped.
  
  
  
• Discovery is a bitch part one: 128 million iOS users received free bonus malware as part of a hack that affected over 4000 apps. (Motherboard)
  
  We knew this happened, but the numbers are only coming to light now as part of Epic's lawsuit against Apple.
  
  
  
• Discovery is a bitch part two: Apple tells companies that it prevents from releasing their apps on the App Store to release a web app instead. But Apple deliberately cripples its browser to make web app experience inferior to native apps. (The Verge)
  
  Oh, and Apple forbids other browsers from the App Store. Yes, you can download Chrome, but all you get is Safari in a paper hat.
  
  And, of course, you can't distribute iOS apps except via the App Store.
  
  
  
• Inland is a budget-priced store brand for Microcenter. Turns out that it doesn't suck. (Serve the Home)
  
  They tested the Inland Premium 1TB SSD, and it's as fast as any competing PCIe 3.0 SSD - and in fact 10% faster than is own listed specs - while being one of the cheapest models in its class.
  
  
  
• If you use Foxit Reader to read PDFs, update now. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Or just uninstall it. Chrome and Chromium-based browsers like Edge have PDF support built in.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Edge the current release crashes while watching YouTube videos in full screen mode (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Hah. You think that's bad? Chrome crashed my entire computer playing YouTube videos.
  
  Admittedly I was playing multiple videos at once, and also two different games, but it still shouldn't crash.
  
  
  
• Only criminals use encryption says the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, or NKVD. (ZDNet)
  
  "Show me the man", said an NKVD spokesperson on conditions of utter secrecy, "and we'll lock him up. But better us than the Victorian Police, mate. Those bastards are crazy. Don't tell them I said that."
  
  
  
• Everything old is on fire again. (Science)
  
  Specifically, Chernobyl.

posted by Pixy Misa at 03:36 AM

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