### Issue 1715 - Tuesday 18th October, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Kanye West is buying Parler
- Discord has cool new features
- Class action against Github's Copilot for stealing open source code
- The RTX4090 is a password cracking beast
- Cheap Philips Hue Bridge, 400GB microSD card, refurb AirPods Max, 16TB Seagate HDD, Bose soundbar, Surface Pro 8, Surface Laptop 4

## The News

### Kanye West is buying Parler

Kanye West has been on a meaner and more destructive, series of weird events lately (explicit and repeated antisemitism mainly, there's so much going on with Kanye that's out of scope for this newsletter) and the latest act in this current episode is buying Parler. That's right, Kanye West is now the owner of that bizzaro version of Twitter designed to be a safe space for "conservatives". He said he's buying Parler because "in a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves" and that the "proposed acquisition will assure Parler a future role in creating an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome". Some people reckon Kayne's getting fleeced by a group of right-wing influencers taking advantage of his mental health issues. That's certainly a theory.

### Discord has cool new features

Discord announced new stuff today. There's an App Directory now, so admins of servers can browse the over 500,000 third-party integrations they can provide to their users. They're also testing the ability for server admins to pay for those apps, basically making a Discord add-on app store platform. For the non-server admins there are now "Activities" - "a way for users to hang out online in more interactive ways, such as playing games or watching videos together directly within Discord". Putt Party and Watch Together are free and Nitro subscribers get additional activities like Poker Night, Sketch Heads, Chess, Land-io, Letter League and more. On the topic of Nitro, there's a new basic version for less money with fewer features so they can extract some revenue out of tweens with spare pocket money.

### Class action against Github's Copilot for stealing open source code

Matthew Butterick is suing Github/Microsoft. He, along with other developers in a class action lawsuit, are frustrated with Github's Copilot feature. This feature sucks up the enormous amount of open-source code sitting on Github and spits out "suggestions" for code as you type, even offering "larger blocks of code, like the entire body of a function". This use of open source code goes against many of the licences that code is made available with and Matthew argues it will damage the open source community to the point of starvation. Microsoft reckons the training of AI is fair use, which if that assertion goes unchecked, means any code, any where, regardless of licence, is up for grabs by Microsoft's (and Google's and Meta's) AI beast.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The RTX4090 is a password cracking beast

Weak, old and reused passwords are even more dangerous than ever now that the RTX4090 is out and about. In some Hashcat benchmarks thrown up on Github, the new 4090 is twice as fast as the 3090 in the NTLM and bcrypt tests. Passwords and hashes that used to take a year to crack now only takes 6 months for example. The 4090's power efficiency improvements also mean there's less electricity required for the same level of performance, so not only is it faster to brute force passwords, it's also cheaper than ever to do so per hour. All those stolen, but hashed, password sets stolen by hackers and lying around the dark web are a little more vulnerable now.

## Bargains

- Philips Hue Bridge - $43.99 from Amazon
- SanDisk Ultra 400GB MicroSDXC Card - $49.01 (or $92.14 for two) from Amazon USA
- Refurbished Apple AirPods Max (Space Grey) - $559.99 from Mobileciti's eBay store
- Seagate ST16000NM000J 16TB 3.5" HDD - $499 from QNAP
- Bose Smart Soundbar 900 - $1119.96 from Myer
- Many variants of the Surface Pro 8 are on clearance at Microsoft's eBay store
- Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (Ryzen 5 CPU, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $839.13 from Microsoft's eBay store

## The End

📻 Flashing Lights - Kanye West

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

💬 Checked out the paid subscriber only forum? It's a tidy little place to discuss tech with like minded Aussies.

👋 Forums not your thing? The Sizzle has a Slack group you can procrastinate in and chat with other nerds bored at work.

💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info, change email address or cancel your subscription? Visit the customer portal.

📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.

🫂 Friends of The Sizzle is a small group of businesses or organisations operated by Sizzle subscribers. Support your fellow Sizzler!

💔 Tired of my bullshit? Unsubscribe and I'll never speak to you again.

## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.