Daily Tech News 8 November 2023

• Optus, Australia's second largest telecommunications provider (I think), went down today. (ABC)
  
  And I thought I was having a rough time when ARP updates for some of the IP addresses I needed to migrate were taking minutes to propagate rather than seconds.
  
  Anyway, around 4AM the entire Optus network ceased to be. Mobile phones and internet access simply dropped dead right across the country. Shops had to remember what cash looked like as point-of-sale terminals became useless bricks. Melbourne's trains stopped working because, well, Melbourne. Some remote towns with a single communications link via Optus were cut off entirely.
  
  I'm not sure quite how they managed this, because the national internet backbone itself was completely unaffected. Probably DNS. It's usually DNS.
  
  
  

• It looks like AMD's Zen 4 laptop chips are headed to the the desktop. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is good news, because while the current generation of AMD desktop chips do have integrated graphics, the laptop models have up to six times more graphics and can actually be used to play games.
  
  
  
• If you have a Chamberlain MyQ smart garage door opener - which can do useful things like automatically close the garage door when you lock your front door at night - now you don't. (The Verge)
  
  That is, you still have the device, but it is now a Chamberlain MyQ stupid garage door opener. All "unauthorised" API access has been cut off, which means while it can talk to other home automation devices, it won't.
  
  On the other hand, the Chamberlain mobile app now has ads. So there's that.
  
  
  
• What do do if your shiny new M3 Mac comes preinstalled with a weird outdated version of MacOS that can't be updated. (Ars Technica)
  
  Get a refund.
  
  Well, or download the update manually. That works too.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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