The Linux Hack was an inside job…

that's right you know what time it is a

fact I'm going to rely on as I do not

have a watch but I trust you a serious

security back door and a widely used

compression utility for Linux has come

to light after being discovered and

flagged by developer Andres Frey who

works for Microsoft by day and maintains

postgress SQL by night just like Batman

Ry only noticed because he was making

the best of his Easter Long Weekend by

doing some micro benchmarking when he

noticed that encrypted logins to part of

the exed compression Library were using

a ton of CPU which led him to discover

the back door in xed utils God you're

saying Zed did we say Zed in Canada I'll

I'll stop now I'll say it normal had it

not come to light when it did it could

have been potentially disastrous XZ

there you go utils is available for

almost every distribution of Linux but

luckily the malicious code was spotted

before it could be added into the

production release of a major drro it

was however founded beta releases for

Fedora Rawhide and and Debian as well as

a stable release of Arch Linux and the

arch users will inform you of that the

back door apparently works by injecting

coat during SSH authentication thereby

allowing unauthorized remote access

bizarrely this malicious code seems to

have been introduced by one of XZ utils

two primary developers giaan AKA GIA

t75 one of the earlier Terminators who

had been contributing to the XZ project

regularly since 2021 while it's possible

that their system was compromised G t75

is account engaged in suspicious

activity over the course of several

weeks including repeatedly contacting

others about their new fixes several

notable contributors to the project have

therefore theorized the G t75 is

involvement in XZ has been part of a

long con intended to get more and more

invasive permissions through both

genuine code contributions and a

pressure campaign conducted through sock

puppets against its original developer

Lassie Colin for faster development so

far researchers have yet to find any

evidence that gean exists Beyond his

presence in open- Source circles which

honestly isn't all that different from

other Linux users stop browsing the web

using a text editor and go outside your

family misses you you have to see your

family to tell them you use

Arch Amazon is abandoning its

cashierless checkout system at its chain

of fresh grocery stores in part because

it wasn't really cashierless and instead

relied on a small army of over a

thousand overseas workers monitoring and

reviewing footage from these

transactions the program launched in

2016 under the name just walk out the

empowering slogan of absent fathers

everywhere just walk out involves a

series of cameras and sensors throughout

the store which track customers after

they scan in at the door and

automatically charge them for the items

they take when they leave 27 of Amazon's

44 fresh stores have just walk out

available and while Amazon gave the

impression that the system was fully

automated an estimated 70% of just

walkout sales required a human review as

of 2022 according to information from

the information they love that stuff

they do love information Amazon disputes

this number and claims that these

reviewers primary purpose was to

annotate videos for improved machine

learning if accurate however this would

seem to indicate that the company wasn't

actually replacing human cashiers it was

just Outsourcing them most likely by

having an underpaid office worker in

India watch you while you shop this

might explain why Shoppers at Fresh

stores sometimes found it would take

hours to receive a receipt for their

purchase Amazon hasn't given up on the

cashier lless experience though and its

stores will instead increasingly rely on

dash carts essentially a combination of

shopping cart and self checkout which

tallies up items as they're added to the

cart although maybe there's actually

just a tiny little man hiding behind the

screen who uses a peephole to look

inside your cart and see what you're

buying who knows as part of a settlement

to a class action lawsuit Google has

agreed to delete a massive store of web

data that it collects Ed while users

browsed using Chrome's purportedly

private incognito mode Google has

likewise agreed to update their privacy

policy as well as the incognito mode

landing page to explicitly notify users

that the company continues to collect

data from third party sites and apps

regardless of what mode their browser is

in Google originally argued to have the

case dismissed under the logic that

users had implicitly consented to have

their data collected even in incognito

mode because it warned them that their

activity might still be visible to

websites they visit which is a bit like

saying that your wife consented to your

affair because you told her there might

be other women at the company Christmas

party you know how these parties Go I

mean I mean you put some scotch in me

and I put myself in

women in a silver lining for Google the

agreement will spare the company from a

potential $5 billion penalty which is

good because they need that money to

invest in their next project preventing

other people from stealing your browser

data I don't steal their brand Google is

testing to Vice bound session

credentials to block malicious actors

from accessing sensitive accounts by

stealing and cloning a person's session

credentials a form of encryption that

ties authentication cookies to the

user's PC something we here at lmg have

intimate intimate experience with now

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so that's how that goes and now it's

half past Tech news also known as quick

bit of clock just some fun Studio lingo

we all say it it's what we call it yeah

I totally didn't make that up Qualcomm

has released new benchmarks showing

their upcoming arm powerered Snapdragon

X Elite laptop processors embarrassing

Intel's recently released meteor Lake

core Ultra chips compared to Intel's

core Ultra 9 185h and core Ultra

755h really cool names the elite

performed around 50% faster in geekbench

at around half the power consumption

also beating out amd's ryzen 9 7940 HS

and even Apple's M3 qualcomm's regularly

been bragging about how great the X

Elite is since October and with the

month to go until they finally arrive on

the new Microsoft Surface lineup I think

it's time to chill for a bit you didn't

see apple chasing people around on the

street with PowerPoint presentations

about how the M1 is going to

revolutionize the industry please please

they left it to the boardrooms all of

them last year Google warned that the

Google podcast service would soon Google

perish and for sooth it has now come to

Google pass how do they know users

outside of the US will still be able to

listen to podcasts until June 24th but

after that everyone will have to get

their fix somewhere else like on app

that Google hasn't killed yet YouTube

music hopefully you don't go looking on

that app for Google's Z made by Google

podcast though because YouTube music

doesn't have it Google if if you're

going to kill so many apps it would be

nice to have more of a plan than the

Star Wars sequels no why did don't

mention it oh it hurts tsmc has

announced that workers are already

returning to factories less than 24

hours after Taiwan was hit by its

strongest earthquake in 25 years as a

reporting the Quake killed nine and

injured more than 1,000 people 70% of

tsmc's chipm operations had recovered

within 10 hours of the earthquake and

that is unfortunately important because

Taiwan is responsible for 80 to 90% of

the world's high-end chips but I think I

speak for the world when I say hey tsmc

come here new chips are nice and all but

so is taking a single day off after your

country was devastated by an earthquake

having said that um thanks for

preventing a domino effect that would

inflate the price of basically

everything on Earth even further so back

to work Australia is turning to Virtual

fences after mult mulle car companies

have tried and failed to calibrate their

onboard large animal detection systems

to kangaroos they already had large

animal detection systems Volvo for

example has had a system that detects

pedestrians cyclists and various sunry

Beasts of the forest since 2016 but

kangaroos have proven a bit of a problem

in part because the average pedestrian

can't run at 44 mph or launch themselves

10 ft into the air not with that

attitude according to Volvo Australia's

Tech technical lead David picket

kangaroos tend to move unpredictably and

when it's Airborne you lose the point of

reference for where it actually is

terrifying instead Australia will be

experimenting with virtual fences which

are activated by approaching headlights

and use flashing lights and high-pitched

alarms to scare animals away from

roadsides installation is unfortunately

expensive but on the other hand a

kangaroo hitting your windshield is both

expensive and bad for the kangaroo does

that mean that driving down a highway in

Australia will sound

like a piece of metal discarded from the

International Space Station apparently

ripped through the roof and two floors

of a home in Naples Florida and if you

felt relieved after I specified which

Naples it was you're a bad person the 2B

piece of cylindrical metal that hit the

home of Alejandro Otero is alleged to be

part of a 2.9 ton cargo pallet

containing nine batteries tossed from

the ISS 3 years ago apparently Japan may

be liable for the damages since their

space agency sent the now discarded

structure into space so congratulations

to whoever had Florida man Su Japan

after extraterrestrial attack on their

2024 bingo card but if you've got more

Tech news on your bingo card just come

back on Friday when we post the next

episode if you don't play Bingo very

simple you should instead come back on

Friday when we post the next episode

don't do the other one don't mix them up