Daily Tech News 7 October 2023

• August: The tech job recession is over. When will hiring accelerate? (Business Insider)

  "The Tech Job Recession is Over," the Bernstein analysts declared in a recent email to clients. "Tech layoffs have slowed to a trickle. When will the hirings start to reaccelerate?"

  
  
  
• September: Tech layoffs are all but a thing of the past. (Tech Crunch)

  Layoffs in the technology industry have slowed sharply in recent months, bringing the number of jobs lost to tech’s efficiency push to a near stop.

  
  
  
• October: Two tech giants lay off more workers as cuts continue. (San Francisco Chronicle) (archive site)

  Tech giant Meta and the Twitch division of Amazon laid off additional workers in the past week, underscoring that job cuts continue in the hard-hit industry nearly a year after huge reductions began.

  Unexpectedly.

• The NSA and CISA have shared their list of the top ten cybersecurity misconfigurations. (CISA)
  
  The list includes:
  
  1. Doing the wrong thing
  2. Not doing the right thing
  3. Your mom
  
  Yes, it really is that useless.
  
  
  
• A data leak from 23andMe has resulted in DNA analyses of 1.3 million Chinese and Ashkenazi customers being sold online. (The Record)
  
  This one is a bit weird. It doesn't seem that 23andMe itself was hacked, but that the classic trick of trying logins from other sites that have been hacked still works.
  
  But that was compounded by 23andMe's feature that lets you see information on other users who are close genetic matches.

  The data included profile and account ID numbers, names, gender, birth year, maternal and paternal genetic markers, ancestral heritage results, and data on whether or not each user has opted into 23andme’s health data.

  That's not good.
  
  The real question - and it's a question The Record has asked 23andMe but not received a satisfactory answer - is what the multiplication factor is.
  
  Did the hackers have tens of thousands of accounts that reused their login and password, and then find a few matches for each?
  
  Or did they start with a relatively small number of accounts and then parlay that into a massive data leak?
  
  23andMe isn't saying, and while they might not know the exact answer, they should at least know the statistics. And since they're not saying, it might not look good.
  
  
  
• I'm Back is a 20 megapixel Sony Micro Four Thirds digital camera sensor... Tucked into a 35mm film roll. (Petapixel)
  
  Which is a great idea except for - or rather despite - the fact that the field of view of the sensor is half that of actual film.
  
  
  
• Real Water - a premium water brand that was once sold at outlets like Whole Foods - was neither real nor water. (Ars Technica)
  
  Well, it contained water.
  
  It also contained hydrazine.
  
  As in, rocket fuel.

  "These people were outrageous," Kemp said. There was "no safety testing, no analysis of the product to see what was in it." He said that the person who developed the water treatment process for Real Water bought the titanium tubes "from some Russian guy in the 80s" and spent four to five months making alkaline waters in his garage, working until he had a formula that didn't make him vomit or have diarrhea.

  A jury just awarded a $228 million verdict against Real Water, which, considering that the stuff actually killed people, seems justified.
  
  Meanwhile, speaking to Real Water's customers: Water is not supposed to be alkaline, you idiots.
  
  Water is not supposed to be anything. It's water. It's neutral by definition. If it's not, you're watering wrong.
  
  I just checked and my local supermarket does sell a different brand of alkaline water. I only hope that one doesn't cause liver failure in babies.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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