### Issue 1400 - Monday 5th July, 2021

I didn't know where else to put this but I wanted to share it. Please enjoy this video of Mark Zuckerberg wakeboarding with an American flag whilst John Denver plays in the background.

## In Today's Issue

- Audacity's new "owners" add needless privacy infringing telemetry nobody asked for
- Kaseya enterprise IT management software used by REvil to spread cryptolockers
- Qualcomm to make ARM-based consumer device SoC to compete with Apple M1 with ex-Apple engineers
- Memories of iPods past, present and future
- dghdf5h

## The News

### Audacity's new "owners" add needless privacy infringing telemetry nobody asked for

A few months ago, Muse Group "acquired" (the lead dev of Audacity gave control of it to Muse Group with the promise of new features and regular updates) the popular open source audio editing software Audacity. Only 2 months in and the new owners have added a shitload of telemetry to the app that the main audience of open source and free software folks really don't like. Audacity now collects "data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities requests", along with the usual blob of computer info that could easily be used to identify you. All this data is of course, shared with basically anyone who wants it according to the privacy policy. Absolutely unnecessary. There will likely be a fork of Audacity without this crap.

### Kaseya enterprise IT management software used by REvil to spread cryptolockers

It happened again. A software platform called Kaseya, used by managed service providers to look after the IT infrastructure of other businesses, has been hacked and then leveraged to infect customers with ransomware. An automatic update pushed out REvil ransomware to dozens of customers. Kaseya is telling its customers to "immediately shut down their servers to avoid the possibility of being compromised by attackers" while they work on a fix. A supermarket in Sweden had to close 800 stores over the weekend because of it. This is basically the same attack vector and outcome as SolarWinds late last year.

### Qualcomm to make ARM-based consumer device SoC to compete with Apple M1 with ex-Apple engineers

Qualcomm's new CEO is talking up their prospects in making an SoC to challenge Apple's prodigious M1. Cristiano Amon told Reuters that they're going to make an ARM based CPU with a built in 5G modem, which makes sense considering they dropped US$1.4b on a startup called Nuvia in March. That name might not sound familiar and the names of the people who created Nuvia also might not be familiar (Gerard Williams III, Manu Gulati and John Bruno), but they're all ex-Apple and were responsible for the CPUs that lead to the M1. Apple even sued them for taking Apple tech with them and poaching Apple's engineers. God speed to Qualcomm, even if they are ruthless business pricks. Intel has dropped the ball and so someone's gonna compete with Apple and AMD.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Memories of iPods past, present and future

Tanner Villarete has re-created a 6th-generation iPod Classic in a web browser out of Javascript, CSS and shitload of SVGs. You can hook it up to your Spotify or Apple Music account and it'll load up songs from your account. It's very accurate to the physical device and impressive technical display that hit me right in the nostalgia. So much so I hit up eBay to try and buy one, but saw that a working 5th-gen (my favourite iPod) is $179! Maybe I'll pop into Cashies and see what nuggets they've got lying around. Or perhaps Apple will see this thinkpiece on The Verge and make an modern iPod with a 24-bit, 192kHz DAC that integrates with Apple Music???

## Bargains

- FIFA 21 for PlayStation - $13.95 on the PlayStation Store
- Refurbished iPhone 7 32GB - $169 at Coles
- Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - $13.49 on Steam
- Cities Skyline - $3.60 at WinGameStore
- iPhone 12 mini 64GB, iPhone 12 64GB - $899/$1199 at The Good Guys

## The End

📻 Sunday - Sonic Youth

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

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