vanished

platter density is a big one. You can read a lot more with one rotation with a denser platter.

about time, geezuz

I still think a reverse sleeper would be funny.  Fanciest, nicest case you can find with total garbage components in it  

Well, well, well, how the turntables... Turn...
 
Zerodium, an American information security company who pays security researchers to submit exploits in various programs have stopped accepting certain submitting for iOS.
To be more precise, they have stopped accepting exploits for iOS LPE (local privilege escalation), Safari RFC (remote code execution) and sandbox escapes due to "high number of submissions".
 
In other words, so many people are finding exploits in iOS which allows remote code execution, or privilege escalation that Zerodium no longer want to know about all the new ones being found.
Or as the CEO of the company a bit more bluntly said:
As Chaouki says, security in iOS is next to none (at least for code execution). The few things holding it together is PAC (Pointer Authentication Codes, an ARM feature) and the fact that a lot of the exploits don't survive a reboot.
 
This is in stark contrast to Android where the bounty has gone up over the years, and Android exploits are now more valued than iOS ones.
 
 
There seems to be two explanations for this.
1) iOS 13 has been far buggier than previous iOS releases. It has actually been so bad that Apple has overhauled the company's internal testing process to not make the same mistakes with the release of iOS 14.
 
2) It wasn't until December last year (so about half a year ago) than Apple had a public bug bounty program at all. That, coupled with the fact that Apple has been very hostile towards people who have tried to reverse engineer and pick apart their products has made it so that people haven't been interested in looking into iOS security. Or at the very least, the exploits found have not been reported publicly. It's now been a few years since companies like Zerodium started offering money for iOS exploits and that coupled with lots of people being at home in quarantine might have resulted in people looking into Apple products more.
 
 
Ryan Narraine from Intel has dismissed Zerodium's comments as "pure PR", which might be true because they are getting lots of PR right now.
Patrick Wardle from Jamf Security somewhat agrees with Ryan but also think there is some legitimacy to the claims.
 
 
Sources: Twitter as posted above, as well as The Register and cyberscoop.
 
 
Personal opinion since that's necessary: I agree with Patrick that it's probably a bit of a PR stunt, but also a real issue. I also think it's important to distinguish from the various different "categories" of security there is in a product. For example it seems like iOS still has better on-device encryption than Android. It also seems like from a privacy standpoint, iOS is also better. But for executing code from a browser, or gaining escalated privileges, Android (at least AOSP) is better. Which one is most relevant for the average Joe is up for debate.

Have to shake my head at the people blindly lashing out at Apple even as outside experts say that Zerodium's claims are full of hype and not as dire as they're made out to be.
 
I'm not so naive as to think iOS is completely airtight, but remember that some security researchers thrive on exaggerating threats to draw publicity.  It's easy to get attention if you say iOS security is ruined and don't have to explain the flaws (not that they should, since they should still honour disclosure policies); don't be surprised if it turns out that the flaws disclosed post-patch aren't nearly as exciting as they sounded before.
 
I'm not under the illusion iOS is rock-solid security wise, but it is odd to hear people lashing into it as they cheer on Android, a platform known for poor security update policies, poor oversight of app submissions and more real-world malware attacks.  I still find it wild that Google lets OEMs release security updates as far apart as 90 days from each other.  Imagine if Dell or HP was allowed to skip some vital Windows patch because they didn't 'feel' like delivering it... there'd be riots!

"secret"
 
 

Maybe? There's a chance there's a UART or JTAG debugging port on the control board. If the developers left it there and left the chip open, you might be able to modify the firmware. 
 
The hacky way to do it would be to desolder the buzzer and tie the buzzer to the input of a microcontroller. Whenever the pin goes high, you can have it start your own tone on your own buzzer. That's probably the way I would end up doing it because I'm more of a hardware guy and it would almost certainly be easier.

I dont even know how to call this but ever since i bought this monitor and gpu (i bought them at the same time) ive been having this weird vertical tear every now and again.
 
Its like a small strip of the image is missing from the middle of the screen and is moved to the right of the screen. I made a video with my phone since this behavior doesnt show on screenshots and it will be much easier to understand what im talking about.
 
I never seen this, whats happening?
 
A reboot fixes the issue but its still annoying.
 
link to vid (i used Riley's face to demonstrate, sorry Riley)
https://imgur.com/a/yvchDeH
 
Monitor: Acer Predator XB271HU IPS 1440p 
GPU: Zotac 2080 AMP Extreme
 

lol nice
I can't imagine many people are going to be shelling out $1k+ for a pro-grade lens to bolt to a $50 sensor module, but having the option is pretty cool.  For anyone who already has a lens like that "laying around", this setup should provide some interesting opportunities that simply weren't possible before.

This could be a somewhat cheap way to build your own security cameras, or a live stream camera.

For the price of 50USD you can now build your own Sony digital camera, the module is also interchangeable with C ans CS mounts.
Source: https://linuxgizmos.com/raspberry-pi-gains-12mp-camera-with-optional-c-and-cs-lenses/
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-product-raspberry-pi-high-quality-camera-on-sale-now-at-50/
Thoughts: This looks like the most powerful camera among all SBCs, if not all desktops as well. It's definitely better than the crappy sub 10MP most computers come with. I could imagine a few good uses for this module such as the tweet below, I wish other brands would do this as well.
 
 

Ah, remember the cursor color/size I wrongly mentioned in my notes (fixed). What I wanted to say (in my notes, I believe), is that now you can make it easier to find (if you have trouble) the text cursor, by adding highlighting pointed at the top and bottom of it.
 
 
 
I'll add it to the minor points

It's actually 300 TBW

In these times, it's incredibly difficult to get a decent webcam, or even a capture card, as everyone seems to be sold out right now.
 
Canon just dropped a new, free software utility, which would allow you to use certain Canon ILC or Powershot series camera as a high quality webcam via USB. No capture card required.
 
The catch is that the software is in beta, it's only available for Windows 10 x64, and support is limited to those in the USA.
 
From TechRadar:
https://www.techradar.com/news/canon-releases-free-software-that-turns-some-of-its-cameras-into-webcams
 
The utility is here:
https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/self-help-center/eos-webcam-utility/
 
Canon USA has a video on it:
 
 

A lot of talk about how Microsoft should "fix" this, but unless I've very much misunderstood what DMA is, it's not a Windows feature and not within their control, it's just a name for how the hardware functions.  With this in mind, does the same fact (implications of DMA + thunderbolt) exist in macs as well?

True, I just find it ironic (if true) that they went so hard into thunderbolt, dropping other far more common ports in the process, meanwhile also going hard on encryption and other security features that do more to hurt the average user than actually protect them.

A lot of talk about how Microsoft should "fix" this, but unless I've very much misunderstood what DMA is, it's not a Windows feature and not within their control, it's just a name for how the hardware functions.  With this in mind, does the same fact (implications of DMA + thunderbolt) exist in macs as well?

A lot of talk about how Microsoft should "fix" this, but unless I've very much misunderstood what DMA is, it's not a Windows feature and not within their control, it's just a name for how the hardware functions.  With this in mind, does the same fact (implications of DMA + thunderbolt) exist in macs as well?

A lot of talk about how Microsoft should "fix" this, but unless I've very much misunderstood what DMA is, it's not a Windows feature and not within their control, it's just a name for how the hardware functions.  With this in mind, does the same fact (implications of DMA + thunderbolt) exist in macs as well?

Microsoft reveals why no Surface device has Thunderbolt and why you can’t upgrade your RAM
by Surur @mspoweruserApr 25, 2020 at 10:50 GMT
 
Source: https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-reveals-why-no-surface-device-has-thunderbolt-and-you-cant-upgrade-your-ram/
 
Simply put, because it is not secure.
Well this sucks, I was hoping that the Surface 7 and the Surface X would have type C (surface X has type C) and thunderbolt but I have to admit I did not take this into consideration.
The article is not very long but there is a snippet from the presentation that explains this.
 
 
Thoughts?

I haven't seen any issues but theres a very noticeable performance drop. Feels sluggish even.

I can't remember what company but in an official build guide (or ad or something, don't recall) they actually showed doing this.  Everyone cringed because of it but I think on some level that shows that it's really not the end of the world.

Ignoring the symptoms and just going based on the history of usage you described, I can't imagine it's fried.  That doesn't mean that that's not a possibility, but if that is what happened somehow, I wouldn't blame your usage of it.

I would say things with particularly long loading times, and games which load continuously as you play and move around (open world).  Beyond that, it's just a luxury, but for those two (especially the latter) it's closer to (or even outright) a necessity.