Miscellaneous Tech News
-
SSDs are on track to get bigger and cheaper thanks to PLC technology
Storage of five bits in every NAND cell is coming, courtesy of Intel and Toshiba.
Wednesday, Intel announced it's joining Toshiba in the PLC (Penta-Level Cell, meaning 5 bits stored per individual NAND cell) club. Intel has not yet commercialized the technology, so you can't go and buy a PLC SSD yet—but we can expect the technology will lead eventually to higher-capacity and cheaper solid state drives. To understand how and why this works, we need to go over a little bit of SSD design history. One of the most basic architectural features of a solid state disk is how many bits can be stored in each individual NAND cell. The simplest and most robust design is SLC—Single Layer Cell—in which each floating-gate NAND cell is either charged or not, representing a 1 or a 0. SLC flash can be written at very high speed and typically survives several times more write cycles than more complex designs can. (Endurance levels are specified per drive, but National Instruments uses 100K, 20K, and 3K as sample program/erase cycle endurance levels for SLC, eMLC, and MLC drives here.) -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
SSDs are on track to get bigger and cheaper thanks to PLC technology
Storage of five bits in every NAND cell is coming, courtesy of Intel and Toshiba.
Wednesday, Intel announced it's joining Toshiba in the PLC (Penta-Level Cell, meaning 5 bits stored per individual NAND cell) club. Intel has not yet commercialized the technology, so you can't go and buy a PLC SSD yet—but we can expect the technology will lead eventually to higher-capacity and cheaper solid state drives. To understand how and why this works, we need to go over a little bit of SSD design history. One of the most basic architectural features of a solid state disk is how many bits can be stored in each individual NAND cell. The simplest and most robust design is SLC—Single Layer Cell—in which each floating-gate NAND cell is either charged or not, representing a 1 or a 0. SLC flash can be written at very high speed and typically survives several times more write cycles than more complex designs can. (Endurance levels are specified per drive, but National Instruments uses 100K, 20K, and 3K as sample program/erase cycle endurance levels for SLC, eMLC, and MLC drives here.)
That's telling -
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/30/email_signature_legally_binding_contract/
UK court ruling says email signature blocks can sign binding contracts -
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/whats-a-backup-baltimore-city-it-kept-data-on-local-drives/
Councilman “mind-boggled” by Baltimore City IT department ineptitude
In a report to a committee of the Baltimore City Council last week, City Auditor Josh Pasch said that the city's Information Technology department could not provide any documentation of its work toward meeting agency performance goals because the only copies of that data were kept on local hard drives and never backed up to a server or the cloud.
Just for extra highlighting: the only copies of that data were kept on local hard drives -
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/victorian-hospitals-go-offline-after-ransomware-attack-531696
Victorian hospitals go offline after ransomware attackA number of regional Victorian hospitals and health services have been forced to shutdown their IT systems, including some electronic health records, after experiencing a ransomware attack on Monday.
-
@nadnerB said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/whats-a-backup-baltimore-city-it-kept-data-on-local-drives/
Councilman “mind-boggled” by Baltimore City IT department ineptitude
In a report to a committee of the Baltimore City Council last week, City Auditor Josh Pasch said that the city's Information Technology department could not provide any documentation of its work toward meeting agency performance goals because the only copies of that data were kept on local hard drives and never backed up to a server or the cloud.
Just for extra highlighting: the only copies of that data were kept on local hard drivesI'd like to point out that everytime I hear of Baltimore, this is what what happens in my head first:
Youtube Video – [00:51..] -
Councilman “mind-boggled” by Baltimore City IT department ineptitude
City IT lost data for audit because it was all kept on staff workstations.
In a report to a committee of the Baltimore City Council last week, City Auditor Josh Pasch said that the city's Information Technology department could not provide any documentation of its work toward meeting agency performance goals because the only copies of that data were kept on local hard drives and never backed up to a server or the cloud.
-
Webkit zero-day exploit besieges Mac and iOS users with malvertising redirects
Flaw rendered ad-sandboxing protections "entirely useless," researchers say.
Attackers have bombarded the Internet with more than 1 billion malicious ads in less than two months. The attackers targeted iOS and macOS users with what were zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome and Safari browsers that were recently patched, researchers said on Monday. More than 1 billion malicious ads served in the past six weeks contained exploit code that redirected vulnerable users to malicious sites, according to a post published by security firm Confiant. The surge of malicious ads exploited a Safari vulnerability in both iOS and macOS, as well as a Chrome vulnerability in iOS. -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Webkit zero-day exploit besieges Mac and iOS users with malvertising redirects
Flaw rendered ad-sandboxing protections "entirely useless," researchers say.
Attackers have bombarded the Internet with more than 1 billion malicious ads in less than two months. The attackers targeted iOS and macOS users with what were zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome and Safari browsers that were recently patched, researchers said on Monday. More than 1 billion malicious ads served in the past six weeks contained exploit code that redirected vulnerable users to malicious sites, according to a post published by security firm Confiant. The surge of malicious ads exploited a Safari vulnerability in both iOS and macOS, as well as a Chrome vulnerability in iOS.Holy crap! all platforms have been hammered over the past 2-3 weeks, first Chrome (on windows, Mac AND Linux - mobile was safe) with no click full control, then IE, and now iOS....
-
Most mobile browsers display the Web, that’s it—Vivaldi Mobile can change that
Vivaldi's power-user browser used to be desktop only. Not anymore.
Vivaldi—makers of the power user's favorite Web browser—has finally released a mobile version. Vivaldi for Android (sorry iOS users, it's Android-only for now) brings most of what's great about Vivaldi to your phone, and thanks to Vivaldi's sync service, you can even have all your desktop data on your mobile device. Web browsers are perhaps the most important piece of software we use in 2019. Our devices are often little more than small windows onto the Web, and the browser is what we use to see and explore what's in that window. For all its importance though, the modern browser, especially the mobile Web browser, offers precious little in the way of features. It displays the Web and... that's about it. Want to interact with what you see? You're mostly out of luck. -
BBC News - North Korea: 'Grave moment' as North tests missile fired from sea
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49915224 -
Here's why Microsoft wanted a custom chip for the Surface Pro X's brains
Microsoft bets its SQ1 tweak to Qualcomm's 8cx processor will speed up Windows on Arm and attract crucial software developers.
We knew we'd get a bunch of new laptops at Microsoft's Surface event on Tuesday. What we didn't know is we'd also get a new Microsoft processor, a Qualcomm-derived chip called the SQ1. That chip in the new Surface Pro X carries a message from Microsoft: It's time for laptops to get phone-like all-day battery life, but not if that means sacrificing processing power to get there. Microsoft's Surface products, with their integrated hardware and software, serve a dual role. First, they're a serious business at Microsoft. Second, they also let the company show consumers and other computer makers Microsoft's view of the future of personal computing. The SQ1 gives Microsoft a bit more control over that future while telling software makers they'd better get with the program, too. -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
a Qualcomm-derived chip called the SQ1. That chip in the new Surface Pro X carries a message from Microsoft: It's time for laptops to get phone-like all-day battery life, but not if that means sacrificing processing power to get there. Microsoft's Surface products, with their integrated hardware and software, serve a dual role.
So basically copying what Google already with with the OP1. Also an ARM, also made specifically to speed up laptops. Made for Chromebooks over a year ago.
-
American Express Insider Breaches Cardholder Information
The ex-employee accessed names, Social Security numbers, card numbers, and more in an attempt to commit fraud.Data breaches don't always involve cracked passwords and criminal outsiders. American Express is proving this with its notice to certain cardholders that an employee accessed personal information in an attempt to commit fraud.
-
@wrx7m said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Data breaches don't always involve cracked passwords and criminal outsiders.
They've always said that the majority is from insiders.
-
Microsoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymore: It’s all about apps and services
'“The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us,” was the message from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella yesterday.'
-
@Kelly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Microsoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymore: It’s all about apps and services
'“The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us,” was the message from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella yesterday.'
Duh, it's why they are giving away the OS.
-
@Kelly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Microsoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymore: It’s all about apps and services
'“The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us,” was the message from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella yesterday.'
I thought that they said that like five years ago.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Kelly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Microsoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymore: It’s all about apps and services
'“The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us,” was the message from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella yesterday.'
I thought that they said that like five years ago.
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Kelly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Microsoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymore: It’s all about apps and services
'“The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us,” was the message from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella yesterday.'
I thought that they said that like five years ago.
Implied, never stated before that I have read.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Kelly said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Microsoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymore: It’s all about apps and services
'“The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us,” was the message from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella yesterday.'
I thought that they said that like five years ago.
As JB said - I don't recall hearing them outright say it - but now that they have - I wonder how much less they are going to really care about Windows and spend even less dev'ing it, testing what they dev, etc.
