The EU has dropped a massive piece of tech regulation - the Digital Markets Act. There's a lot of stuff in it, but the headline potential outcome of this law is "the largest messaging services (such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage) will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms". The DMA will also require "explicit consent" for combining personal data for targeted advertising and requirements for "users to freely choose their browser, virtual assistants or search engines". Non-compliance has severe penalties, like 10% of the company's total worldwide turnover (for Apple that's US$37b) and bans on mergers/acquisitions of other companies. About goddamn time.
Seven alleged members of the Lapsus$ "data extortion gang" have been arrested by the City of London Police. All seven are between the ages of 16 to 21, with the ringleader a 17 year old kid from Oxford going by the aliases White/Breachbase, who "is believed to have accumulated over 300 BTC - around US$13 million at today's value, from hacking activities, SIM swapping being one of them". Both Microsoft and Brian Krebs have published separate analysis of Lapsus$'s hacking style and modus operandi. For some reason Microsoft calls em DEV-0537 - to avoid giving them notoriety, I guess? Okta also revised their "nothing to see here" post to "oh actually 366 of our customers were impacted".
Dr. Ian Cutress has been my go-to guy for learning about CPUs for a few years now, pumping out in-depth, quality articles on Anandtech whenever a new chip comes out that I genuinely look forward to reading. He announced recently that he is leaving Anandtech, which sucks, but luckily, he is still active on YouTube as "TechTechPotato". Here's a video of Dr. Cutress explaining what makes Apple's M1 Ultra such a beefcake. I much prefer reading his work than listening to him, but at least he hasn't disappeared from public life like old mate Anand Lal Shimpi who is now property of Apple.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
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