Taf the Ghost

A lot of that really doesn't matter as much anymore on the x86 generation of consoles and there also wouldn't be any regressions for basically anything going between Zen 2 to Zen 3 or 4.
 
The bigger reason is this is still a custom monolithic SoC and it's not a direct Zen 2 architecture, it's a custom one designed with Sony so if the CPU were to be changed then it would be an entirely new SoC and require to go through a lot more design and manufacturing validation which is costly. Beefing up the GPU while requiring a lot of work doesn't require changing anything about the the CPU aspect of the SoC or likely any of the physical lay out of it.
 

 
The entire left side is most likely going to be unchanged and unmodified.
 
One of the key things about something like a PS5 Pro is cost, less work = better. So I don't think compatibility is the issue but the underlying reason is much the same. Also anything that runs on the PS5 Pro still has to run on the PS5 and if you give 50% more CPU power then you also run the risk of games being created to use that (intentionally or not) aka not running on the PS5.

Purely compatibility reasons. yes, zen4 can run everything zen 2 can, but not at the same timings for all commands. Its supposed to be a ps5 still, not a ps6. Compatablilty when making a pro version of a console is the number one priority. 

IMO the only thing I personally want out of the ps5 pro is HDR10+ and Dolby HDR support. 

 
  
there is a user accessable m.2 slot that you can put in more storage. It has no proprietary lock like the xbox has. 

Summary
Nearly 20 years after the debut of LiMux, the project where the city of Munich, as well as Lower Saxony, migrated the majority of their computer systems from Microsoft Windows to a custom Linux distribution before being cancelled in 2017, someone else is now ready to take on the challenge. This time, it's the state of Schleswig-Holstein. Citing the goals of independence, sustainability, and security, the state is planning on migrating its 30,000 computers to Linux and other open source software.
 
Quotes
 
 
My thoughts
I hope them the best. Chipping away at Microsoft's business monopoly is always a good thing.
 
Sources
https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/ministerien-behoerden/I/Presse/PI/2024/CdS/240403_cds_it-arbeitsplatz.html
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/germanys_northernmost_state_ditches_windows/

Summary
 Bell (Canadian ISP, Television service provider, and content licensor to other Television services) is now going to delete your cloud PVR recordings after 60 days.
 
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My thoughts
 Given that it's direct competitor in the market, Rogers, has a 1 year expiry, Telus has 90 days, why is there an expiry at all? So the ISP can free up disk space? So they can force their users to watch the VOD version of the same show they don't have all the episodes to? To force people to watch Netflix or CraveTV if they want to watch the entire series?
 
Like I've long since complained about Telus's complete incompetence about having any shows on their VOD service. You might click a TV show and you might have the most recent episode and one episode from 2 years ago, and nothing else. The ISP's VOD services are absolutely worthless because they want you to pay for CraveTV, because they directly profit from that.
 
Given that ISP's no longer even offer local PVR's and you can't buy PVR's that hook up to HDMI (legitimately) is this yet another attempt and destroying media?
 
Sources
https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/pvr-pullback-bell-to-delete-viewers-saved-tv-shows-and-movies-after-60-days-1.6834904

I already know the reason. Worked for Samclub from 2013 to 2015. I will not work any job thats majority customer service. And I will not work any job that does cash handling.

Amazon Go with its Walkout technology that was introduced a while back, where customer with an Amazon account can simply walk in, take what they need and walk out has ended. The shopping experience may be convenient as you won't have to wait for the check out line, but it actually
Amazon is going to replace their Walkout technology with what they called Dash Cart, which is a
Gizmodo (article link)

Hot take. Credit should probably be frozen by default. 

Eh. Equifax already leaked half of American's social security numbers. Thats why I keep my credit on Deep Freeze. T Mobile has already been breached like 5 times. Comcast got breached last year. It was only a matter of time for AT&T.

From someone I know who works for AT&T, the messaging from the higher-ups about the cause of the outage was inconsistent and contradictory, so this news is not surprising; it is just disappointing. I guess we all have to have an eagle eye on all data. And if you are an employee, congrats! Your SSN might also be compromised, and we all know how easily THAT can be fixed (For those outside the US, your SSN is your Social Security Number, and it is linked to your retirement fund. On top of being an unsecured set of numbers, it also unofficially has the role of your Government ID, and losing it once will follow you for years to come)
 
Congrats AT&T, you punished your former and current customers, as well as your employees, for entrusting their data with you. Hey, at least you gave us $5, so I guess everything is fine.

Would you like Option A or Option B?
 

True, it is not an April Fools Joke 😉

 
Excuse me what? They were stored reversible why?

Oof. At least they encrypted it, I guess?
 
Also looks like - for the birth dates at least - the encrypted data wasn't salted. The dataset has birth dates in an encrypted state. It includes a separate file (rainbow table) for birthdays which just includes every possible birth date combination and its encrypted value. It's possible to compare the encrypted value from the dataset to the table of birth dates to get the true value.

 
I'm actually surprised that birth dates were encrypted at all.
 
2021 was when an attempt was made to sell data stolen from AT&T. Apparently this data has been confirmed by AT&T to be from 2019 and include data on current and former customers from 2019 and prior.
 
If it was 2019 then the attacker would have generated every possible birth date combination since 1900 (1900 - 2019 = 119 years).
I wonder if that is also the same for the SSNs, since that also includes a separate table for decrypting the values. If SSNs weren't salted and they had the encryption key they could have just generated a table of every possible social security number and their encrypted value.

Summary
-This is Not an April Fools Joke-
 
AT&T, one of the Big Three Cellular Network providers as well as internet to millions of Americans, announced that a dark web database was released containing 7.3M active AT&T users and 65M inactive users. Most concerning is the leak of Social Security numbers and dates of birth. 
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
First AT&T had the major service outage, and now a massive breach of personal data. While the data is speculated to be from 2021, it is unknown how far back the data extends, so customers who switched form AT&T back in 2018 (Hi, hello, its me) could still be affected. Admittedly I was part of a family plan so my SSN should be safe(r).
 
As a reminder, using both a 2FA app like Google Authenticator as well as a Password manager are some of the best ways you can protect yourself in the digital world we now live in, which feels almost inevitable that our data will be at some point compromised. 
 
Sources
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/att-data-breach-leaked-millions-customers-information-online-108697485
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/30/tech/att-data-leak/index.html
https://gizmodo.com/att-data-breach-hack-73-million-current-old-customers-1851378110

IANAL Being a monopoly in itself is not illegal. It's abusing the position that is. I had anti-trust training at a past company, who didn't want to become hit by such. They were the dominant player in a particular niche and it was a very nice earner. Think professional products where you get higher margin. Not consumer tier flashy stuff. So they advised on behaviours that could be negatively interpreted and should be avoided.
 
At the end of the day it will be up to DOJ to collect sufficient evidence that laws are broken.

Laws against malicious compliance? I'm down for that. 
Laws against being deliberately anti-consumer: good luck with apple and Nintendo. I feel like they've got a game of chicken going on where they're trying to see who can treat their customers worse and still have their product be bought regardless.

Summary
It is happening. According to the AP, the Department of Justice in the US is accusing Apple of having a monopoly over smartphones in the US
 
Quotes
 
 
 
My thoughts
I never thought the iPhone would be accused of being a monopoly, but thinking about it quickly as I write this, I can see why. The ecosystem (iMessage) has taken over market share among youngsters (me), and Apple essentially has customers for life. I am curious to see how this plays out. 
 
I will add more articles and sources as the news plays out.
 
Sources
AP
The Verge
Lawsuit

Corporate Vtubers have success on Youtube because they have marketing budgets. 
 
Phase Connect is based in Vancouver. They advertised on other Vuber content, because I've seen this exact ad.
Literately:

That's Harbour Center.

 
Anyway among Western Vtubers, Twitch is where the community building and social interaction is. Korean Vtubers were formerly pretty big on Twitch, but then Twitch had to pull out of Korea.
 
Among Japanese (Corporate) Vtubers, they're basically JUST on Youtube. This is because superchats are still not really a thing on Twitch, and they briefly were and then... not https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/06/22/introducing-hype-chat-a-new-way-to-stand-out/
 
Youtube is FULL of bots. Different kinds of bots, but they're there, and they are worse than on Twitch. Twitch you can get away without "sub only mode" as long as you have at least one moderator. Youtube... forget that, you'll get random bots popping in and promoting other youtube channels at random.
 
 

Wait, who?

Summary
 Norfolk County Council  successfully won a  £385m class action lawsuit against Apple for covering up poor sales in China
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
 While this is just pin money for Apple, for those loosing out on their pensions this is a significant amount. Apple obviously didn’t want a court ruling on this so have seemingly done the right thing. However, it should not have taken 4 years to do so. So this is probably just another case where only the lawyers win.
 
Sources
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68580235

Summary
Lumafield (who make the CT scanner LTT now has) CT scanned the Stanley Quencher cup, recently finding controversy for having lead inside of it (but spoiler alert, it's not anywhere it's going to touch the drink). A great informational series exploring the product, why the lead is used and how it's protected from the liquid inside, with some fantastic explanational images!
 

 
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
This is a really great look at what we might be able to get from LTT Labs in the future. How do the internals of various products work (computer parts, or their own creator labs products), especially in areas that it's hard to see non-destructively. They could also potentially find manufacturer claims that could be verified.
 
Sources
Web Article version: https://www.lumafield.com/article/finding-lead-in-stanleys-quencher-industrial-ct
X version: 

Guys, I went as far as to create an account here just to tell you the video has a whine in the background bleeding from the projector from 1:52 on. It is distracting as it's sitting at an unpleasant 15600Hz. Please mind this for the next time you are working with old hardware because for audio engineers or people with tinnitus (I, unfortunately, fall in both of these groups) this makes the video very hard to watch.

Keep up the great work otherwise.

This was a settlement, not a legal precedent.
 
For legal precedent see Sony V Connectix; where Connectix effectively won the right to reverse engineer the bios.  While not entirely related, it's still relatively related to this.
 
The biggest thing though is that Nintendo went after them with the anti-circumvention measure, which in my opinion is one of the worst thought out portions of the DMCA.
 
That's why lots of emulators work in clean room kind of concepts, and don't talk about where/how to extract bioses.  All they need to know is that you provided a valid bios.

They just gave up without a fight...
Because Nintendo 100% would've dragged this on, costing them way too much in legal fees.
 
I went ahead and saved the latest version of Yuzu when this whole thing started. Considering it's open source, though.... Cut one head and 10 more will spawn from it. They will just be more careful about it.

Summary
Yuzu and Nintendo have settled the case. Ending Citra and Yuzu, including a 2.4 Million Dollar payment to Nintendo
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
It may be over for emulation. You'd have to create entirely new BIOSes from scratch for any device you want to emulate or the legal precedent this may set will likely make it illegal. I feel like Linus Torvalds and his hatred of Nvidia, only at Nintendo at this point. It is a sad day for Emulators.
 
Sources
IGN
The Verge (quote source)
 
[PROPOSED] FINAL JUDGMENT AND PERMANENT INJUNCTION
JOINT MOTION FOR ENTRY OF FINAL JUDGMENT AND PERMANENT INJUNCTION

In a new report, the White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) has called on developers to use "memory-safe programming languages," a category which excludes the popular languages. 
 
Quotes
 
The market has been flooded with developers who have degrees or certifications with only a single semester of Java programming. Doesn't matter how "memory safe" the language is. With the incredulously low standard for programmers these days, they are all a threat. Stop blaming the language!
 
Sources:
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/security-software/white-house-urges-developers-to-avoid-c-and-c-use-memory-safe-programming-languages