Daily Tech News 30 November 2022

• Apple's App Store is an ad-ridden mockery of its former self. (Business Insider)
  
  If you're working on a good an useful app, you have to jump through flaming hoops to get it in the App Store.
  
  If you're producing worthless garbage that makes Apple money, no problem at all.
  
  
  
• The same Ikea desk legs that were out of stock before are out of stock again. Should have ordered them when I had the chance, even if I'm not planning to put those desks in place right away.
  
  That only affects the main office; the desks in at least four of the other five rooms use different legs that are still in stock and which I am going to order right now before those also disappear.
  
  Ordering the legs for ten desks gives me a delivery fee of $29. One small desktop, $599. That's why I didn't place an order sooner.
  
  
  
• Speaking of ordering stuff, I bought some books. I buy books all the time - every time there's a Humble Book Bundle that isn't rubbish I'll throw some money at it, so I average about 100 new books a month.
  
  But those are digital. I stopped buying paper books a few years ago because (a) I mostly read on my tablet and (b) my old house was completely and utterly out of room.
  
  Now I have room. Lots of. Have to buy all the books before they stop printing them.

• If you've been around the Web for a long time this page should give you an attack of nostalgia, and possibly epilepsy. (NeoCities)
  
  
  
• MineCity 2000 converts SimCity 2000 save files into Minecraft maps. (GitHub)
  
  That's one way to do it, I guess.
  
  Where is that video of the Hololive fan Minecraft server? They did it the hard way.
  
  Oh, there it is. Those year-end roundups take ages to put together but they make stuff easy to find.
  
  
  
  
• Mastodon privacy: Who actually holds your data? (Privado)
  
  The answer makes sense: The server you log in to holds details like your email address and password, all servers hold your public data, and any server hosting a user you send a private message holds that private message.
  
  Which means the admin of any server hosting a user you send a private message can read that private message. No end-to-end encryption.
  
  There are reasons for that, and the former staff of Twitter were little better than a random nobody running an anonymous Mastodon node, but it's something to be aware of.
  
  
  
• Apple looks set to fall short by 20 million units on iPhone sales this quarter. (Reuters)
  
  Due to the global recession that dare not speak its name and the ongoing higher-order fuckery in China. Not sure how much each element is contributing, but neither is good.
  
  
  
• Snap - as in Snapchat - has told its employees to show up at the office or consider themselves ex. (CNN)
  
  Four days a week, at least.
  
  And since the company has already announced layoffs of 20% of its staff, I expect that threat of being exed is perceived as real.
  
  
  
• Sam Bankman-Fried says he couldn't possibly have been using his technical skills to steal billions of dollars from customers because he doesn't have any. (Coin Telegraph)
  
  Technical skills, that is. Well, customers too at this point.
  
  Who the fucking fuck thought it was a good idea to give this sociopathic retard ten billion dollars in the first place? And why hasn't anyone been arrested yet?
  
  
  
• Distributed crypto exchange Serum, formerly backed by FTX, is toast. (The Block)
  
  "Here's the code. Build your own exchange. We're done with this bullshit." said lead developer - I swear we are not making this up - Mango Max.
  
  
  
• Amazon has announced a "Zero ETL" integration between Aurora and Redshift. (The Register)
  
  This is what we in the olden days used to call an integration. ETL stands for extract, transform, load, meaning you dump the data out of one application, painstakingly convert the file format, and load it into the new one.
  
  Which is not an integration at all.
  
  
  
• Why streaming service subscription rates keep going up. (The Verge)
  
  Because they spend billions of dollars on crap nobody watches.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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