Daily Tech News 5 October 2024

• Mark Muppetly, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, continues his spiraling descent into psychosis: WordPress.org just belongs to me. (The Verge)
  
  WordPress.org is not non-profit organisation managing the open-source WordPress code.

  "I happily provide WordPress.org services to literally every other host," Mullenweg says. There is "no requirement to give back. WordPress will be open-source forever and ever, and so there will never be any legal requirement to give back." But WordPress does still "request" that companies contribute something. "It's better for WordPress if they give back."

  WP Engine's lawyers are reportedly looking at replacing their Porsches with Ferraris.
  
  
  
• 159 Automattic employees (the commercial side of WordPress) have taken the hint and the available severance offer and walked out. (The Register)
  
  They are not going down with the ship.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Melk Murgatroyd decided to join in a Hacker News thread on the WP Engine suit and... Potentially libel the party suing him. (Hacker News)
  
  This seems unwise.
  
  
  

• Having crashed the stock price by 90% through years of abject mismanagement, the Guillemot family and Tencent are looking to buy Ubisoft. (WCCFTech)
  
  Yves Guillemot is CEO of Ubisoft and behind the decisions that have ruined the company.
  
  Sounds like an amazing plan:
  
  1. Destroy your own company.
  2. Stock price crashes.
  3. Buy it for pennies on the dollar.
  4. Spend years fighting shareholder lawsuits.
  5. Price continues to decline.
  6. Lose everything.
  
  
  
• Civilization VII recommends 32GB of RAM, a 16 core CPU, and an RTX 4070 to play at 4K resolution. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Civ VI recommended 8GB of RAM.
  
  
  
• After getting smacked down by the courts last year, the SEC is going after the Ripple blockchain yet again. (CNBC)
  
  It's the usual thing: The SEC says that everything and anything is a security without ever issuing any written regulations.
  
  They just show up out of the blue with a lawsuit, and if you win, they just do it again the next year.
  
  
  
• The Pilet 5 is a big clunky PDA that you can't buy. (Liliputing)
  
  It's kind of cool in an industrial retro way. It's a case, screen, keyboard, and battery that fits a Raspberry Pi 5.
  
  According to the developer the hardware includes a laser pointer that "has the power to destroy planets, just like the death star" though this feature is not confirmed by the official specs.
  
  
  
• TSMC's 2nm node - called, reasonably enough, N2, is 25% more efficient than the current N3E process. (Notebook Check)
  
  But also twice as expensive per wafer as the mainstream N5 and N4 processes.
  
  Expect leading-edge devices to cost more when N2 chips start shipping next year.
  
  
  
• As expected, the Ars Technica commentariat is shrieking with rage that a judge has chosen to uphold the Constitution with an injunction against California's ban on inconvenient satire and the site itself has pinned the blame on Emmanuel Goldmusk. (Ars Technica)
  
  Plus ca change, plus la orange.
  
  
  
• Ars also offered its own take on the WordPress debacle that is so hilariously one-sided that its own commenters are roasting the site. (Ars Technica)
  
  Good.
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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