You know, Kierkegaard wrote, of all ridiculous things,
the most ridiculous seems to me to be busy.
But he died more than 100 years ago and he never had to keep up with the tech news.
It'll keep you busy, trust me. Yeah, who's the smart guy now?
Microsoft is sick of you making offline or local Windows 11 accounts
and they're not gonna let you do it anymore. In their announcement of a new
Windows 11 insider preview build, Microsoft says they are getting rid of known mechanisms
often used to create a local account. According to Windows Central,
amongst these removed mechanisms are commands like start MS-CXH,
locallonely. Locallonely.
Locallonely. Microsoft says if you wanna use Windows 11,
which I know we all desperately do, we're gonna have to complete the out of box experience
or Ooby with internet access and a Microsoft account.
The announcement states that creating an offline account bypasses critical setup screens
that are part of the Ooby and could cause users,
users to exit the setup without a properly configured device.
But I know that's all just code for give us your data, we want your sweet, sweet data, obviously.
Interestingly, folks already appear to be finding workarounds for Microsoft's newest changes,
including just creating a local account on an earlier Windows 11 build before updating.
Microsoft, I'm gonna offer you a bit of constructive criticism here.
Maybe folks would be more willing to create accounts the way you want them to
if they actually wanted to use Windows 11, huh?
Focus on making Windows 11 cool. Cart before the horse kind of thing, you get it.
Qualcomm is acquiring Arduino, the Italian company beloved
for their open source microcontroller boards and I'm assuming free breadsticks at lunch.
It's just like the Olive Garden, but a country, right? It's understandable that Qualcomm
would want to subsume Arduino's incredibly popular
and adaptable hardware and software into their own edge computing stack,
but enthusiasts, along with people who have never touched a microcontroller before,
worry that this move will hurt Arduino's open source approach.
But the two companies say they're serious about keeping that open approach
and community spirit alive. So they're updating Arduino's Uno lineup
with the Uno Q, a little hybrid board
that combines Qualcomm's Linux Debian capable Dragonwing QRB210 chip.
Yep, with Arduino's STM32U585 microcontroller.
It's compatible with Arduino's existing shields and other hardware.
Its schematics are open source and it's coming alongside App Lab,
a new open source tool for building specialized apps
for the Uno Q's unique hardware configuration.
If you've still got questions, don't ask us. Again, we don't know,
but thankfully, my other dad, Jeff Geerling, has a great new video and article up about this development.
He's so smart, probably smarter than your dad.
He's not for Uno. Ah!
Synology has backtracked on its policy banning the installation of non-verified hard drives
in its NAS products. In as little as six months,
Synology was able to surmise that requiring people
to buy special Synology branded drives was pissing off their customers and driving sales down.
Very impressive. Synology's press release says that 2025 disk station plus
value and J series models running the newest DSM 7.3 software
will support the installation of non-validated third party drives with some caveats.
If you want to use M.2 drives, those still need to be a model listed
on Synology's hardware compatibility list and enterprise NAS units,
which only worked with verified drives before Synology expanded the policy in April.
Will still need special rubber stamped drives.
So what tipped the scales here? Well, Synology told Ars Technica
that testing more drives and adding them to their validation program is taking a while.
So they figured they'd open things up, even though the only thing that drives their decisions
is creating reliable and secure data solutions. As long as that data is secure on a validated drive,
they are willing to drive this whole thing into the ground,
except when their sales go down. Cause nobody's security is perfect.
It's what I put a floppy in there. See if we care. Okay?
So we're just so chill. And then go check out our sponsor. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote
about how the slow overcomes the fast.
Well, thanks for sure. The quick bits hate Lao Tzu. I've got to get at it.
Nintendo is suing James Archbox Williams,
a moderator for the Switch Pirates subreddit
where he allegedly promoted and sold Switch ROMs
and other piracy tools. And we did this so often.
Nintendo was able to track down his identity and sue him for 4.5 million in damages,
which they claim is actually nowhere near
the actual damage is done. This guy almost put Nintendo out of business.
While we often joke about Nintendo being unreasonably
litigious, if their claims are accurate here, that Williams continued to sell ROMs
even after being served a cease and desist, deleted or hid evidence, and then ghosted lawyers,
AKA a f***ing around, then it seems like he's entered
the find out phase of things. Nintendo don't ignore a cease and desist.
Logitech is bricking its pop smart home buttons
on October 15th in a move that Hackaday concisely called sudden and rather customer hostile.
Pop button users are receiving an email informing them
that the product, which is less than a decade old, is being shut down.
But don't worry, they're getting a 15% off coupon at Logitech's store.
However, Hackaday says this coupon is only usable by US based customers.
Damn it. Logitech is not only just shutting down the product
and its support for things like Apple HomeKit, Sonos and Philips Hue,
anyone hoping to keep using them locally is also completely out of luck.
So Logitech has really pushed my pop buttons with this one.
Good one, Riley. I'll own it.
Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, Riot Games and Epic Games
were all hit with spikes in outage reports
at around the same time on October 6th, according to data from Down Detector,
which led many to assume a massive DDoS attack was underway.
Now, according to cyber news, some are speculating the attack comes
from the massive botnet, Aysuru, Aysuru.
Why would someone go after our dear Steam though?
Yet even more conjecture suggests that this attack
may be to sell a product through a demonstration of its strength.
Personally, I'm pretty sure it might be that.
Or alternatively, all the video games cause violence.
Boomer people have learned to hack. Look out, grandma's plugged in.
And it ain't just Skyrim this time. OpenAI said its recently launched
Sora 2 video generator would block depictions of public figures.
And it did for the approximately two seconds it took for people to find a loophole
and start barraging Zelda Williams with fake photorealistic videos of her late father Robin.
Very cool and normal behavior. Sora 2's ability to recreate Pikachu being cooked
and eaten and Mario running from the cops also caused a ruckus with copyright holders,
which seemed to catch OpenAI CEO Sam Altman by surprise.
I thought they'd love it. So this week, OpenAI added more restrictions to the model,
but only after enough AI videos had flooded the web
that it triggered Mr. Beast to wonder, hmm, what will AI videos do to YouTube
and how will it impact the millions of creators currently making content for a living?
Has anyone thought of this yet? Scary times.
The Neuralink brain computer interface is helping one of its patients control a robot ARM.
And those are just the sorts of cool sentences we get to say on tech links sometimes.
Anyway, Nick Ray, a Neuralink patient who has ALS,
posted a video of himself using Neuralink to direct an assistive robot ARM to pick up a drink for him,
bring it to his mouth, and allow him to sip off from it,
without it impaling him through the jaw.
It's great. That's the thought of it. We're all thinking it.
We're like, don't. Ray wrote in his post that he's also been able
to put on his hat and microwave chicken.
He's very excited to talk with his hands again.
Just be careful where you're swinging those robot arms, Nick, okay?
You don't know your own strength. And we don't want a doctor-octopus situation here, okay?
Take it easy, but very happy for you. We should take it easy, too.
Hey, let's have a rest and come back on Friday for more tech news. After all, Vietnamese philosopher,
why are you making me titch not hon,
believes that resting is a very important practice and resting is a precondition for healing.
So chill, okay? Heal.