Some hack for good, some hack for evil, and some hack because Taylor Swift's
Errors Tour sold out too quickly, or at least that's how it seems now that
Ticketmaster hackers have leaked what they claim are valid Taylor Swift tickets.
Now that might sound cool and Robin Hood-like, but unfortunately it is not.
This goes back to May when hacker group and sparkly Twilight Vampires, Shiny Hunters,
allegedly stole the data of 500 million Ticketmaster customers,
including 193 million ticket barcodes. To try and put the pressure on Ticketmaster to pay a ransom,
Shiny Hunters seems to have released the ticket data for 166,000 Taylor Swift tickets,
with instructions on how to turn this data into scannable barcodes.
Ticketmaster has released a statement saying no customers are at risk of losing their tickets,
because their safe ticks technology refreshes ticket barcodes every few seconds,
preventing them from being stolen or copied. Having said that, they also advertise that
their barcodes are saved offline to the Ticketmaster app once viewed,
which could imply the tickets could be transferred. One software engineer already found a way around safe ticks,
just to avoid using Ticketmaster's god-awful app. Oh, and also scalpers have been bypassing
Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes for at least a year now, so yeah, they're just straight up lying.
Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the US government in relation to the two
fatal crashes that occurred in 2018 and 2019. Those crashes killed a total of 346 people,
but Boeing gave the Department of Justice a strong defense against going to trial.
Money. In 2021, Boeing made a $2.5 billion deal with the DOJ that required the aeronautics firm
to implement major safety changes and engage in no wrongdoing for three years.
But after the door blew out on that Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year, the DOJs
smartly determined that Boeing had broken the terms of the deal.
Now, Boeing has accepted a new deal to avoid a trial that will require them to spend at least
$455 million on improving compliance and safety programs. And they're definitely not going to
break another promise to the US government. That'd be crazy! Not everyone is super happy with this
deal. For example, the families of the crash victims. They've made it known that they will
be asking the court to reject the deal, believing it fails to hold Boeing accountable.
And yeah, when you think about how Boeing's deception of federal regulators led to hundreds
of deaths, a promise to do better next time does sound a bit inadequate.
PC hardware manufacturer Zotac has come under fire for allowing anyone to access private
customer data with a simple Google search. According to an investigation by Gamers Nexus,
the company seemed to have been storing RMA files containing full names, mailing addresses,
and other sensitive customer information in a publicly accessible server,
making them accessible in Google search. Not only was customer data exposed, but business to
business invoices were also equally Google-able. Fortunately, it seems Zotac is now trying to
fix the issue. While links will still show up in web searches, they appear to be dead when
you actually click on them. But before we give Zotac too much credit for doing the bare minimum
after a maximum screw up, some information is still stored in Google's cache. So if you happen
to have bought and then returned any Zotac merchandise, you may want to search your name
and Zotac to see if any results pop up. You can request that Google removes the result from
search by clicking the three dots in the top right of the result, or you can leave it up and
just pretend you're famous. Make sure to get a parent's permission before handling quick bits.
They're very sharp. Contrary to previous rumors, AM5 will not be getting a boost in the 3D Vcache
department over the previous 7000X3D series chips. According to WCCF Tech, the new 9000X3D
processors will feature up to 128 or 96 megabytes of L3 cache on dual and single CCDs respectively.
If there's one thing we love in technology, it's when things stay the same, like core counts and
clock speeds, the latter of which haven't been confirmed yet for the X3D variants. Unless you're
into overclocking, you might want to wait to upgrade. Qualcomm seems to be leaving users of
ARM-based Co-Pilot Plus laptops to fend for themselves when it comes to compatibility issues.
After Microsoft espoused its Prism x86 emulator for Snapdragon X notebooks,
Samsung warned customers that its Galaxy Book Edge 4 Co-Pilot Plus PC cannot run some common
software. According to the register, Qualcomm is simply directing concerned users to community-made
crowdsourced websites that list compatible apps, without explaining why some apps can't be emulated.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is apparently continuing to parrot that x86 emulation works great, but hey,
I guess the Windows on ARM revolution couldn't be a real revolution if the new regime wasn't pumping
up propaganda. It's a real M1 moment. It takes a while. We just learned that last month, police
in Phoenix, Arizona pulled over an autonomous Waymo vehicle that was driving in the wrong lane
towards oncoming traffic. The car's onboard system had apparently gotten a bit scrambled by
inconsistent construction signs, and wound up running a red light like a confused senior try in
their best. The car had neither a driver nor a passenger, and the police dispatch records note
that the responding officer was unable to issue citation to computer. According to Waymo, its
cars are three times better at avoiding collisions than human drivers. Because human drivers also
suck. Microsoft's notepad surprisingly got an upgrade, though. Spellcheck and autocorrect,
41 years into development. What's next? Predictive text in 2034? The new features came out to select
users earlier this year, but now that the massively complicated beta test is complete,
the team has deemed it ready and safe for everyone on Windows 11. There's dozens of us. Along with
all of the other developments over the past few years, like find and replace and tech zooming,
the debate over no pad versus no pad plus plus is over. Plus plus wins. Just use that one, please.
And Australian telecom companies are now sending suspected spam callers to Apatay,
an AI-powered system designed to learn more about scammers while wasting their time
and frustrating their efforts. Apatay is model off past scambating systems like Lenny,
a 2011 chatbot meant to imitate a telephone scammer's perfect victim. A lonely old man,
desperate to talk and annoy this out of them. Unlike Lenny, however, Apatay can imitate victims
of any age and background, making it like a shape-shifting, time-wasting, hydra of an old man
who just wants to talk. My grandkids never call. Where am I? Who are you? I don't have any grandkids,
but it won't be a waste of your time to come back on Wednesday for more tech news unless you
consider hearing tech news a waste of time. But in that case, why are you here now? Still, come back though.