Twitter is continuing its ill-advised rebranding as X
with a mixed degree of success. I'm James Shrive, this is TechLinked
and the iconic dictionary-changing tweet has been renamed to the utterly generic post.
Very Zuckerbergian. Similarly, the once-free-to-use tweet deck
is now available as X-Pro. Not to be confused with X-Pro MIT's online learning program,
X-Pro the Chinese dirt bike brand, X-Pro the crypto token,
X-Pro the laptop, or X-Pro the photographic technique,
otherwise known as cross-processing. While X was initially unable to change its name
on the Apple App Store due to having fewer than two characters,
Apple has now made an exception, inflicting the rebranding on iPhone users everywhere.
Last week, Elon Musk tried and failed to remove the Twitter sign from X headquarters
without a permit. Musk having learned exactly nothing,
then had workers erect a giant flashing X on the roof,
directly facing a residential building across the street. It too has been removed at X Corpse expense.
Worry not, Musk fans, because X has introduced its hottest new feature to date,
the ability to hide the blue check mark indicating that you actually paid for this tomfoolery
like the scarlet letter it is. Shame is a feature, not a bug.
A recently declassified report revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies
are purchasing large amounts of sensitive and intimate information
that could be used to facilitate blackmail if it fell into the wrong hands,
raising the question of whether shadowy government spies
should be described as the right hands. Depends, how soft are they?
Now, new legislation proposed by Congress would restrict all government agencies
from purchasing data from private vendors that would otherwise require a warrant to obtain.
The government agency most displeased with the news is exactly the one you'd expect,
the Fish and Wildlife Service. Actually, it's the NSA.
Representatives of the NSA have apparently reached out
to lawmakers to express concerns that these legal changes could restrict their ability
to conduct mass surveillance on U.S. citizens without having to convince a judge first.
To be fair, NSA lawyers have reportedly created
extensive internal guidelines for the collection of commercially available data.
And I tell you what they are, but they're classified.
The cyberspace administration of China or CAC
has proposed regulations that would dramatically curtail internet use
among the country's miners. 16 to 18-year-olds get two hours per day,
one hour if you're eight to 16, and users under eight get just eight minutes.
Combine that with forbidding any miners from internet usage between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
And I'm guessing someone high in the Chinese government is tired of being woken up by their toddler's
blasting baby shark at 3 a.m. in the morning. I know I am.
In an official statement, the CAC said, the regulations are to help miners reduce internet addiction
and the influence of bad information. I'm just gonna carefully sidestep over the latter point,
like the landmine it is, and focus on the addiction part of that statement.
In the past, China has also cracked down on online gaming addiction by restricting miners
to an hour a day on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays.
Kids aren't the only ones upset. Tencent and ByteDance are some of the many tech firms
whose stocks have dropped since the announcement. Won't someone think of the billion-dollar corporations?
Quick, someone do a TikTok about it. The quick bits have been inside you all along.
So you better cough and back up before I start the Heimlich maneuver.
It's crotch to buns. Apple has announced it will now be requiring developers
submitting their apps to the Apple Store to justify their use of certain APIs
in an attempt to quash certain forms of user tracking.
The concern here is that some developers might be misusing these tools as a loophole
to get away with fingerprinting users, as in attempting to create unique identifiers for users
or their devices without permission. It's like getting fingerprinted in real life,
except it lacks the rare opportunity to feel a police officer hold your hand, but gently.
Oh, Officer Brian. The way he rolled it across the pad.
Let's share a donut later. A new Android malware called Cherry Bloss
can steal user credentials using optical character recognition
and is inside at least four apps available to download
from sites promoting get-rich-quick schemes.
If a user infected with Cherry Bloss opens a legitimate cryptocurrency service,
the malware or overlay a window that mimics the app,
snap a photo when you enter your credentials, and then use optical character recognition
to recognize the displayed text and give it to the attacker.
If you feel misled by those get-rich-quick schemes, they weren't lying to you.
They just never specified who was getting rich.
Today, Twitch announced that it will be expanding its ban on gambling live streams
to two additional online casinos and prohibiting promotion of CSGO skin gambling sites,
claiming that gambling viewership has dropped by around 75%
since it implemented its new policy last October. This coincides with a survey
from YouTuber Hongon Ganga or something that suggests over 70% of CSGO skin gamblers
start before they're the age of 18. He also created a new Steam account
and accessed unregistered casinos without ever passing an age gate.
Under the username I'm14BTW,
maybe they knew he was lying? After losing contact with Voyager 2 last month,
NASA finally reconnected with the probe this Tuesday. The silence started when a wrong command tilted
the Voyager 2's antenna away from Earth, preventing it from receiving additional instructions
or sending any data back. Or maybe NASA said something hurtful
and Voyager 2 just needed some time for itself. But what more does it need?
We've already given it space, 12.3 billion miles of it.
We're trying to make this work here. Semiconductor manufacturer Infineon
will soon offer biodegradable circuit boards that dissolve in hot water,
making them not just recyclable, but compostable too. But worry not,
your computer is not likely to decompose on a humid summer day in Delhi.
The soluboard needs to be immersed in near boiling water for half an hour
before it starts to delaminate. Face it, if you're regularly steeping your motherboard
like a forgotten teabag, your warranty is pretty much toast anyways.
Gotta be in there for at least 60 minutes to get the full flavor. Steeped.
And tea and toast sounds like a perfect snack for when you come back on Friday for more tech news.
Just don't spill it on anything.