Daily Tech News 12 November 2021

• The US government has banned Chinese intelligence agencies Huawei and ZTC from receiving FCC licenses. (ZDNet)
  
  This is one of those rare occasions - like the recent Australian deal for nuclear submarines - where the government does something so obviously correct that you are left wondering what the hell is going on.
  
  But the move only comes after the FCC had already approved 3000 applications to use Huawei equipment in (presumably, the article doesn't specify) mobile networks. Which is a great - if cynical - full employment move by the networks given that the federal government has also announced that it will pay to have the spyware replaced.
  
  Oh, and China Telecom has also been told to pack its bag and be out of the country by the end of the year.

• Patreon is building its own video platform to compete with YouTube. (The Verge)
  
  Three or four years ago this wasn't really viable, and the competing platforms were mostly pretty dire. Now, for a whole range of technical reasons, smaller video streaming services are starting to wok pretty well.
  
  The problem in this instance is that Patreon is just as much of a woke dumpster fire as YouTube but without the fading legacy of technical expertise. I doubt this will end well.
  
  
  
• Microsoft is back to its old tricks. The ones that brought it antitrust attention way back in 2001. (The Register)
  
  The latest update to Windows 11 hard codes the handler for certain URLs - ones used within other Microsoft apps - so that they can only be opened by Edge.
  
  You used to be able to tweak a registry setting to override this, and Firefox and Brave could do it themselves. Now that process has been broken, and if you uninstall Edge then nothing can open those links at all.
  
  
  
• There's more Alder Lake chips on the way . (WCCFTech)
  
  This includes the 12900, 12700, and 12600 - which are not what we have now, because these are missing the K. The 12900 no-K will have a base TDP of 65W down from 125W, but how much power it actually uses is anyone's guess. This may or may not turn out to be a better deal than the K version, and it mostly depends on that full load power number.
  
  
  
• If you couldn't get your hands on a PlayStation 5 for all of this year and were hoping to do better in 2022 you might want to cut your losses and get a Nintendo Switch. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Facing supply chain issues, Sony is further cutting production, which was already lagging behind demand.
  
  
  
• Me: I don't need an Adobe subscription anymore.
  Me: I have the Affinity range, all sorts of Corel products via Humble Bundle, Vegas and SoundForge also via Humble Bundle...
  Adobe: 40% off?
  Me: Sold.
  
  
  
• Pyjion is a drop-in JIT compiler for Python 3.10. (TryPyjion)
  
  It's not a standalone runtime like PyPy, but a library that installs into CPython. It also depends on .Net 6, which is a pretty hefty dependency.
  
  But it does support the latest version of Python, which PyPy doesn't.
  
  Except it doesn't support with blocks or async, which is a bit of a problem.
  
  
  
• Speaking of problems Ars Technica tries to argue that zooming into an image doesn't generate artifacts that weren't present in the original. (Ars Technica)
  
  Yeah, Rittenhouse trial. The article is pure garbage, and the initial comments are the usual mindless left-liberal pablum. But then some of the older Ars readers show up, from before the site turned to shit, and the comment section turns into a free-fire zone.

posted by Pixy Misa at 03:09 AM

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