Daily Tech News 18 October 2024

• WordPress looks to be entering a doom spiral as Mad King Matt Mullenweg tightens his grip. (404 Media) (archive site)

  After an exodus of employees at Automattic who disagreed with CEO Matt Mullenweg's recently divisive legal battle with WP Engine, he's upped the ante with another buyout offer - and a threat that employees speaking to the press should "exit gracefully, or be fired tomorrow with no severance."

  This divides the company neatly into three factions:
  
  1. Those with principles who will quit - and take advantage of the severance package on offer because principles don't pay the rent.
  2. Those who see the writing on the wall and get while the going is good.
  3. True believers.
  
  True believers can be good if you're tackling a difficult problem under an experienced leader, like catching an office building falling from space.
  
  It can also produce Jonestown.
  
  This is looking more like the latter.
  
  WordPress itself will survive, since it's open source, but the company and foundation behind it won't.
  
  
  
• Sad to say I was today years old when I realised why the company is called Automattic.
  
  One of those things that's cute in a toddler but diagnostic of malignant narcissism in a CEO.

• Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite developer kits have been abruptly cancelled and the company will be issuing refunds. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It sounds like this is due to a manufacturing problem. Qualcomm was very non-specific except that the kits did not meet its quality standards, but a reviewer said that bits fall off.
  
  
  
• 6G mobile networks do not reach a blisteringly quick 938Gbps. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That speed was achieved - for a single backhaul link from the base station using lasers.
  
  
  
• Cat's are officially liquid. (Cell)
  
  Back off, man, I'm a scientist!
  
  
  
• Virtual machine images built with Proxmox could be wide open due to a default credentials flaw in Kubernetes. (The Register)
  
  Some of that was actually in English.
  
  
  
• A hard-coded login in SolarWinds' Help Desk product is being actively exploited in the wild. (The Register)
  
  Didn't we hang those guys last time?
  
  
  
• Donald Trump says Tim Cook spoke to him to complain about those filthy communists in the EU. (The Verge)
  
  Tim Apple knows which way the wind is blowing, and knows that there's no chance of Kamala Harris standing up to a stiff breeze let alone the European Union.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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