Miscellaneous Tech News
-
Bitcoin mining producing tonnes of waste
Bitcoin mining produces electronic waste (e-waste) annually comparable to the small IT equipment waste of a place like the Netherlands, research shows.
Miners of the cryptocurrency each year produce 30,700 tonnes of e-waste, Alex de Vries and Christian Stoll estimate. That averages 272g (9.5oz) per transaction, they say. By comparison, an iPhone 13 weighs 173g (6.1oz). Miners earn money by creating new Bitcoins, but the computing used consumes large amounts of energy. They audit Bitcoin transactions in exchange for an opportunity to acquire the digital currency. Attention has been focused on the electricity this consumes - currently more than the Philippines - and the greenhouse gas pollution caused as a result. -
NFT-based fantasy football card firm raises $680m
French firm Sorare, which sells football trading cards in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has raised $680m (£498m).
The NFT-based cards are used by fans to create fantasy football teams which can then "play" each other. The funding was led by tech investor Softbank, with ex-England international Rio Ferdinand also putting in money. NFTs are controversial, with concerns over financial risk and environmental impact. An NFT is a "one-of-a-kind" digital asset that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property. As with crypto-currency, a record of who owns what is stored on a shared ledger known as the blockchain and maintained by thousands of computers around the world. -
Security audit raises severe warnings on Chinese smartphone models
The audit red-flagged Xiaomi and Huawei phones but gave OnePlus a pass.
The Lithuanian National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently published a security assessment of three recent-model Chinese-made smartphones—Huawei's P40 5G, Xiaomi's Mi 10T 5G, and OnePlus' 8T 5G. Sufficiently determined US shoppers can find the P40 5G on Amazon and the Mi 10T 5G on Walmart.com—but we will not be providing direct links to those phones, given the results of the NCSC's security audit. The Xiaomi phone includes software modules specifically designed to leak data to Chinese authorities and to censor media related to topics the Chinese government considers sensitive. The Huawei phone replaces the standard Google Play application store with third-party substitutes the NCSC found to harbor sketchy, potentially malicious repackaging of common applications. -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Security audit raises severe warnings on Chinese smartphone models
The audit red-flagged Xiaomi and Huawei phones but gave OnePlus a pass.
The Lithuanian National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently published a security assessment of three recent-model Chinese-made smartphones—Huawei's P40 5G, Xiaomi's Mi 10T 5G, and OnePlus' 8T 5G. Sufficiently determined US shoppers can find the P40 5G on Amazon and the Mi 10T 5G on Walmart.com—but we will not be providing direct links to those phones, given the results of the NCSC's security audit. The Xiaomi phone includes software modules specifically designed to leak data to Chinese authorities and to censor media related to topics the Chinese government considers sensitive. The Huawei phone replaces the standard Google Play application store with third-party substitutes the NCSC found to harbor sketchy, potentially malicious repackaging of common applications.It's outrageous! Phones are only allowed to leak information to the US authorities!
-
EU Commision proposes USB-C as mandatory standard for chargers.
In an effort to curb electronic waste:
"USB-C will become the standard port for all smartphones, tablets, cameras, headphones, portable speakers and handheld videogame consoles."
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_4613Apple is furious at EU plan.
https://news.yahoo.com/apple-furious-eu-plan-standard-142010661.html -
@pete-s said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
EU Commision proposes USB-C as mandatory standard for chargers.
In an effort to curb electronic waste:
"USB-C will become the standard port for all smartphones, tablets, cameras, headphones, portable speakers and handheld videogame consoles."
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_4613Apple is furious at EU plan.
https://news.yahoo.com/apple-furious-eu-plan-standard-142010661.htmlApple user: Can I borrow your Lightning cable?
-
Russia arrests cybersecurity expert on treason charge
Ilya Sachkov is founder of Group-IB, which specializes in ransomware attack prevention.
The founder of one of Russia’s largest cybersecurity companies has been arrested on suspicion of state treason and will be held in a notorious prison run by the security services for the next two months, a Moscow court said on Wednesday. The charges against Ilya Sachkov, founder of Group-IB, are classified and details of them were not immediately clear. State-run news agency Tass cited an anonymous source who said Sachkov denied passing on secret information to foreign intelligence services. Group-IB, which specializes in preventing cybercrime and ransomware, confirmed that law enforcement raided its officers yesterday but said it did not know the reason for Sachkov’s arrest. “Group-IB’s team is confident in the innocence of the company’s CEO and his business integrity,” the company said in a statement. -
We have customers reporting that Vitelity is losing calls now, too.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
We have customers reporting that Vitelity is losing calls now, too.
Theirs is not a DDoS. They have had multiple technical issues over recent weeks.
https://status.vitelity.com/history -
@jaredbusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
We have customers reporting that Vitelity is losing calls now, too.
Theirs is not a DDoS. They have had multiple technical issues over recent weeks.
https://status.vitelity.com/historyOh, just general problems with similar timing.
-
Researcher refuses Telegram’s bounty award, discloses auto-delete bug
Telegram took months to fix "self-destruct" message bug. Then requested silence.
Telegram patched another image self-destruction bug in its app earlier this year. This flaw was a different issue from the one reported in 2019. But the researcher who reported the bug isn't pleased with Telegram's months-long turnaround time—and an offered $1,159 (€1,000) bounty award in exchange for his silence. Like other messaging apps, Telegram allows senders to set communications to "self-destruct," such that messages and any media attachments are automatically deleted from the device after a set period of time. Such a feature offers extended privacy to both the senders and the recipients intending to communicate discreetly. -
Massive outage....
- BBC
- CNN
- Slack
- Teams
- Al Jazeera
Telegram is up. Zoho is up.
-
Heard a rumor that AWS is down.
-
-
if you can believe it.
-
It is slow as molasses for that page.
-
@scottalanmiller Slack is accessible at least in the East Cost, Same for Whatsapp, Twitter and Teams.
-
@dbeato said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller Slack is accessible at least in the East Cost, Same for Whatsapp, Twitter and Teams.
If I VPN to Miami, WhatsApp is down there.
-
Level 3 reporting that it is impacted.
-
Facebook and some of its apps go down simultaneously
Facebook and some of its apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, appeared to go down on Monday for many users, who turned to Twitter and other social media platforms to lament the outage
The social network and its apps began displaying error messages before noon Eastern time, users reported. All of the company’s family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger — showed outage reports, according to the site downdetector.com, which monitors web traffic and site activity. It was unclear what the cause of the error messages were. Outages are not uncommon for apps, but to have so many interconnected apps at the world’s largest social media company go down at the same time is rare.
