Welcome to TechLink, where we deliver you a dose of tech news in 30 minutes or less,
or your money back. You don't actually directly pay for the news, but still.
AMD has walked back some of its Ryzen 9000 performance claims after the new processors
fell short in review benchmarks. In a blog post, the company explained some of the reasons why
their numbers were better than basically every reviewer ever. A massive factor was AMD running
all their testing in admin mode, which turns out is a big security yikers.
According to Hardware Unbox, what AMD is referring to is enabling the hidden system
administrator account in Windows 11, something that requires command prompt to do.
This isn't the same as a standard account with administrator permissions, mind you.
This account runs with full administrative privileges by default and won't ask you if you're
sure before you do something very stupid. Would you like to have kids?
Even worse, if your system gets compromised, malware or bad actors, and we're not talking
as remiller, can use those privileges too. If that wasn't enough, Wendell from Level 1 Tech
suggests that running processes within that account means you're essentially running those
processes with Windows Virtualization based security disabled. While that would give you
better performance, it turns out your computer is less secure when you don't use features that
contain the word security in the name. AMD claims that some of the missing Ryzen 9000
performance will be added to standard accounts in a future Windows 11 update,
but that means nothing to Windows 10 users, aka most Windows users.
iFixit has declared the Samsung Galaxy Ring unrepairable after a product tear-down,
and it wasn't unrepairable just because they did a really good job at tearing it down.
No, iFixit made the claim because you aren't able to replace the Ring's lithium-ion battery
without destroying it. That means that each Galaxy Ring basically has to be thrown out and
replaced every two years when the battery dies. So it's less one ring to rule them all,
and more one ring of many to end up in a landfill. Unfortunately, 100% disposable status is shared
with every other smart ring and Samsung's Galaxy Buds 3 for the same reason. To make matters worse,
this comes just days after Google confirmed that the Pixel Watch 3 also can't be repaired,
just like the previous two Pixel Watch models. And all of this falls within a larger trend of
companies restricting the reuse of their products. Previously free features that came with the purchase
of a $1,700 SNU bassinet, we all have one, have now been locked behind a monthly subscription.
I imagine this will make it harder to resell your SNU once your newborn outgrows it in
four to five months. On top of that, Peloton announced they will start charging new subscribers
in the US and Canada a $95 activation fee if those users bought their hardware second hand.
What do they do if you buy a third hand? Beat the sh** out of you?
The US Department of Justice has announced they are suing RealPage, the company whose software
is used by landlords to set rent prices. In a press release, the Justice Department claims
their software encourages competing landlords to share sensitive rental information
to help train RealPage's algorithm to suggest better and higher rent prices.
Aw man, now AI is taking jobs away from hardworking price fixers.
The government agency first opened an investigation into RealPage's alleged
anti-competitive practices back in 2022 after an investigative report was published by
non-profit newsroom ProPublica. Things don't necessarily look good for RealPage since at
least two property management companies who used RealPage's software have agreed to settle
several lawsuits filed against them by renters. Frankly, I think all this legal trouble serves
RealPage right. AI isn't meant for making the cost of living higher, it's meant for bigger
things like scamming your grandparents and taking all our jobs. Friendships may come and go, but
quick bits? Well, they end even faster. AMD's upcoming Ryzen 9000X3D chips may be coming out
early next year, according to several sources. Reliable leaker HXL suggested that they may be
coming at CES 2025, which is happening in January. This was then corroborated by both
fellow leaker Wanusmus and Hasan from WCCF Tech. This may also explain reports that AMD's new
budget B-series motherboards are supposedly launching around the same time. If there's
one thing gamers love, it's 3D Vcash. But if there's two things, the other one is a budget-friendly
upgrade path for that 3D Vcash. Apple has decided to split its App Store team into two, King Solomon
style, with one half to handle the EU-specific version of the App Store, also known as the
We're Not Run by Billionaires store. However, at least one notable person will not be present
to deal with this particular bisected baby. App Store Vice President Matt Fisher, who has led
the division since 2010, will be leaving the company, possibly due to concerns that he too
will be sliced in half if he remains. Of course, it would be much simpler for Apple to simply make
one App Store for the entire world that complied with EU regulations. But that would mean less
money for Apple, and they're not ready to throw either half of the baby out with the bathwater.
Microsoft may finally be killing off the Windows Control Panel. Hey, don't get mad at me,
this Tuesday a support document was updated to announce that Control Panel is in the process
of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app. Though on the other hand, Windows has been
promising to retire Control Panel for years. The company has slowly been moving more tools to the
Settings app for over a decade. Yet in that time, Control Panel has been kept around. It's like
that one friend in the squad who you don't really talk to, but you keep him around because he makes
incredible snickerdoodles. You rock, Dave. And so do your snickerdoodles. A Kentucky hacker who faked
his own death to avoid $116,000 in child support has been sentenced to nearly seven years in prison,
as well as $80,000 in damages. Jesse Kipf was guilty of more than being a bad dad, of course,
in addition to hacking and altering state death registries in Arizona, Hawaii, and Vermont,
he was found guilty of both fraud and identity theft. Why couldn't he just keep it hurting his kids?
Kipf, likewise, used the dark web to sell stolen personal data analysts and access to private
businesses and networks. And you think with that many side hustles, he could find some spare cash
to send his daughter. And Lindy AI was forced to patch their automatic responder after the bot
pranked its clients. According to CEO Flo Cravalho, he first noticed the issue when the AI
responded to a client's help request by sending them a link to a video tutorial that didn't exist.
The bot, which was presumably trained on publicly available internet data, instead linked Rick Astley's seminal 1987 hit, Never Gonna Give You Up. As possible, these
kinds of pranks are so deeply embedded in the training data that bots will be asking each other
if they smell up dog long after humanity's extinction. You know what I smell? More tech
news being cooked up, so come back for another episode on Monday. A second helping, if you will.
A second coming?