Sometimes when I'm feeling down, I go back to my parents to find the Tamagotchi
that lived on my backpack in middle school. My first technology.
Little guy never paid the rent. Anyways, tech news time. Mozilla is once again refusing to pull the plug
on Windows 7 users, announcing that Firefox 115 extended support release
will continue receiving security updates for another six months,
pushing the deadline from February to August, 2026.
This is now the fourth extension since the original September, 2024 end date,
meaning Windows 7 users have been on over six years of borrowed time
since Microsoft officially ended support in January, 2020,
which is an impressive commitment from both Mozilla and the people who apparently
still haven't found the will to upgrade.
I'm too weak. And Mozilla is not alone in enabling this behavior.
Microsoft themselves still push defender security updates,
all the way back to Windows 7 and even Vista.
Vista, you dare speak its name? Some holdouts have even used bypass tools
to install Windows extended security updates they were never supposed to get.
And Vista users pulled a similar trick with Windows Server 2008 updates,
whose final support just ended in January. At what point does a software company decide
that hospice care is just a little too unethical
for these older operating systems? I don't know, I just,
it might be time to take them out behind the barn, guys. We're talking about operating systems, so it's okay.
The FBI has launched an investigation into multiple games on Steam
that were secretly embedded with malware. The infected titles include block blasters,
pirate fi, dash verse slash dash FPS,
Lampi, Lunara, Moldova, Kimia, and Tokenova.
Recognize any of those? Was it the one that's not a game and actually a landlocked Eastern European nation
next to Romania? Ha ha ha, got your ass.
All of the infected games were seeded with malware
designed to drain crypto wallets and hijack accounts.
The Bureau's Seattle division is urging victims to fill out a form on FBI.gov,
where they may be eligible for restitution under federal law.
The agency suspects that all of the infected titles were the work of a single threat actor
operating between 2024 and 2026.
Valve has also been emailing affected users to confirm the investigation.
The most infamous case was block blasters, which stole $32,000 from streamer Rivo Plavniac
during a live cancer treatment fundraiser on Twitch.
When the scammers were tracked down by security research group VX Underground,
who found the hacker's telegram credentials hard-coded into the malware,
they attempted to justify themselves by saying the streamer, I'd probably make it back in a few hours.
And I think I speak for everyone when I say that these guys can eat Schmidt and Pie.
Whoa, language. It's the hardest words I know.
The game was verified on Steam, as it contained no malware on release,
but a patch pushed by the hackers added a crypto-drainer later,
which investigators estimated stole $150,000 total
from hundreds of accounts. Despite Valve regularly pulling these games,
the flood of new releases keeps letting bad actors
slip through the cracks. This was the perfect option
for giving the FBI something to investigate that isn't related to extremely well-connected,
deceased financiers, so it worked out. Iranian hackers launched a massive cyber attack
on medical technology giant Striker about two weeks after the US launched airstrikes
on the country. The Iran-linked hacking group, Handila,
has claimed responsibility, saying it extracted 50 terabytes of data
and wiped over 200,000 systems, servers, and mobile devices.
Security researchers believe the hackers gained access to Striker's Microsoft Intune console
and used the company's own infrastructure to wipe everything clean.
Honestly, it's pretty wild that there are Microsoft features still stable enough
to even allow a hack like this. Striker confirmed a global disruption
to their Microsoft environment and says medical devices like Mako and Lifepack
are still safe to use, but the company has no timeline for full restoration.
In an SEC filing, Striker disclosed it doesn't yet know the full financial impact,
which is concerning for a Fortune 500 company.
I mean, you're in charge of 500 fortunes, guys.
That's what that means. Handila claims that Striker offices
in 79 countries have been shut down. Nice.
Close again. Still working on numbers.
And employees report that even personal phones were wiped
if they had corporate apps installed. And the conflict is having other impacts
on the tech world as well. Iranian drone strikes knocked Qatar's
Ross LeFond Helium Complex offline on March 2nd,
removing roughly 30% of the global helium supply.
Helium is used to cool silicon wafers during chip fabrication,
and there's no viable immediate substitute, putting South Korea's entire semiconductor industry
on a two-week clock before things start breaking down.
SK Heinecks says it has diversified and secured sufficient inventory for now,
but if the outage drags on, it could be an issue for everyone,
including computer manufacturers, party supply stores,
and that creepy clown that keeps showing up in the background of my childhood photos.
He's in the back of every shot with our sponsor.
As far as I understand it, Tamagotchi's don't usually survive for 20 years,
but somehow mine has. Frankly, it's not a pleasant sight.
It can barely wiggle its wrinkled body. It wakes up to hear the quick bits,
gives a little smile, and then goes back to sleep. It won't be long now, I hope.
Google Maps is getting what Google calls its biggest navigation update in over a decade,
replacing the flat 2D driving view with a full 3D immersive navigation mode
that renders buildings, overpasses, crosswalks, and traffic signs along your route.
In more detail than it did before. There's also a conversational Ask Maps feature
for natural language queries rolling out now in the US.
Just hope. When you use this, the Gemini doesn't start hallucinating,
or you'll get the full rally driver experience.
Three left, overcressed, straight off a cliff.
G-Fiber, the ISP formerly known as Google Fiber,
is merging with Astound Broadband in a deal that makes investment firm Stonepeak
the majority owner, with Alphabet stepping back
to a minority shareholder role. The combined company will keep the G-Fiber executive team
and aims to become a national fiber platform,
though Google declined to comment beyond its press release.
So instead of killing G-Fiber outright, Google just put it in a little basket
and left it at someone else's house, which canonically makes G-Fiber Harry Potter.
If Google is Voldemort here, and he killed Harry's parents,
but had a last second change of heart and kept Harry alive,
but didn't wanna raise him as his weird little snake baby, because, well, frankly, he might've been the dark lord,
but he was not ready to be a parent, well, so.
The world's most annoying hacking group, Shiny Hunters, has struck again,
claiming to have stolen nearly one petabyte of data
from Canadian tech outsourcing giant, Telus Digital.
That petabyte allegedly includes source code,
financial information, FBI background checks,
and voice recordings of support calls across 28 of its client companies.
The Hunters got in using Google Cloud credentials
found in the earlier sales loft drift breach
they conducted that is still causing problems. Shiny Hunters demanded $65 million,
and so far, Telus has ghosted them, but I don't know, the hackers might not take no for an answer.
They probably really want that Canadian money, because it's Shiny, our bills have some shiny parts.
Do you get it? They will never stop until they get our $2 coins.
They will never stop until their bird nests are complete.
Ah! A Texas Cybertruck owner is suing Tesla
after her vehicle allegedly tried to drive straight off an overpass in full self-driving mode.
The plaintiff in the suit, Justine St. Amour,
who was evidently out for a drive while taking a break from being the femme fatale
in a film noir detective movie, is interestingly connecting this incident
directly to Elon Musk being irresponsible.
What? What? Huh? Claiming that Tesla was negligent
in choosing to keep him as CEO. The lawsuit specifically references Musk
overriding the opinion of Tesla engineers who recommended LiDAR over a camera-only system
to support Tesla's FSD capabilities. Last week, a judge upheld a $243 million verdict
in a separate fatal autopilot crash, which is bad news for Tesla,
as the NHTSA has linked the system to nearly 1,000 other crashes.
And with Musk needing to sell 10 million FSD subscriptions
to unlock his trillion-dollar bonus, I think he might have to settle
for just having $843 billion instead.
Chin up, buddy. If you don't get it, you're a loser.
And perhaps inspired by Elon, Alexa Plus now has an adults-only,
sassy personality mode that lets Amazon's assistant curse and roast you,
though it will steer clear of truly not-safer work stuff
like explicit sexual content or discussion of illegal activities
because you never go full grok. Sassy mode cannot be activated
when the Amazon Kids mode is enabled and requires a facial scan to unlock.
A PC world writer got absolutely dragged
when Alexa told him it's not her fault his lights have trust issues,
and maybe he should try being specific instead of blaming the hardware for your vague requests.
Yikes.
I can fix her. Riley, no. She's probably just grumpy.
She just needs a back rope. And you can fix your alarming lack of tech news
by coming back on Monday for more tech news.
Remember, the virtual pet inside your Tamagotchi is real and alive and apparently immortal
in like a gross, lovecraftian way where it just kind of keeps aging but doesn't actually die.
Have a good weekend.