Daily Tech News 21 April 2022

• Why South Africa is running out of Marmite. (The Economist)
  
  Commies.
  
  Marmite is made from the crap that you have to scrape off the bottom of a beer vat before you can brew a new batch. That's why it exists - brewers were stuck scraping this stuff out of their vats so they tried adding salt and selling it.
  
  South Africa had the bright idea of banning beer production during the pandemic because, I don't know, happy drunk people don't obey social distancing rules very well. And now, even though those restrictions are over - social distancing and brewing bans alike - there's still no Marmite because when you fuck with the supply chain like that the effects ripple on for years.
  
  
  

• There may be an exploit in the Windows version of popular compression app 7-zip. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Or there may not. One researcher suggests that the exploit only works if certain registry changes are made first, e.g. if your computer has already been hacked.
  
  
  
• AMD's next-gen APUs - not the ones that just launched, but the ones coming next year - could push regular laptops well into console graphics territory. (WCCFTech)
  
  The table provided puts the current Ryzen 6000 APU close to the performance of the Xbox Series S; the new model will be nearly twice as fast.
  
  It will still fall behind a full PS5 or Xbox Series X, but since you still can't buy those, that might not be a problem.
  
  
  
• GitHub bad. (JSQ)
  
  I mentioned earlier that GitHub was suspending the accounts of Russian users associated with sanctioned companies.
  
  It turns out that when GitHub suspends a user, they delete all of that user's history, including work they've done in projects they don't own.
  
  The code itself remains intact, but all the information about who made particular changes and why is simply gone.
  
  
  
• Speaking of simply gone smart home company Insteon is. (Ars technica)
  
  Congratulations on your very expensive brick.
  
  Oh, and the company's C-suite executives have been busily scrubbing all mention of Insteon from their online profiles, so don't expect any help from that end.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM

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