Daily Tech News 19 December 2024

• The US government has warned politicians and government officials to avoid the phone network. (Reuters)
  
  It's full of Chinese hackers and nobody can say when - or if - it will be secure again.

  The first recommendation: "Use only end-to-end encrypted communications."

  Which they have been trying to ban.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile in the world of digital license plates, the absolutely thinkable happened: They got hacked. (Wired) (archive site)
  
  Digital license plates aren't supposed to let you change your license plate number.
  
  But of course they do. There's a programming port on the license plate which is secured by a sticker. Peel off the sticker, plug in a programmer, and you can do anything.

• Interpol wants to rename "pig butchering" to "romance baiting". (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Which is actually not a terrible idea. Every time I hear the term "pig butchering" I have to stop for a moment and realise that no, the one I'm thinking of is salami slicing and pig butchering is something different.
  
  Romance baiting is more evocative on what the scam involves.
  
  
  
• Bluesky invited a million sociopaths in through the front door. They were not ready. (Tedium)
  
  It's not a technical issue, it's a people issue. Well, commies aren't people, but not everyone on Bluesky is a communist.
  
  
  
• Not even slightly ready. (The Free Press)
  
  Jesse Singal writes on Bluesky's Jesse Singal problem.
  
  He still doesn't get it, of course:

  Bluesky happens to be left-wing, but I don't think the lesson here is that left-wingers are particularly violent. Rather, the lesson is simply that humans are human, and online, their behavior is shaped by both the prevailing norms in their community, and whether rules constraining that behavior exist and are enforced.

  So what he is saying is that left-wingers are particularly violent.
  
  
  
• The Radxa Orion O6 is an Arm motherboard that is a little more powerful than a Raspberry Pi. (CNX Software)
  
  It has twelve Arm cores - eight A720 and four A520, so fairly powerful, coupled with up to 64GB of soldered RAM, an M.2 slot for storage, dual 5Gb Ethernet ports, HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C with DisplayPort support, and a full-length PCIe x16 slot.
  
  It's mini-ITX form factor, with the board starting at $199 with 8GB of RAM and a case going for $39.
  
  
  
• Australia wants to ban common encryption methods by 2030 because quantum. (The Register)
  
  In theory quantum computers can break many existing encryption methods. But existing encryption methods exist, and everyone everywhere uses them all the time.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

| Access Comments