### Issue 1281 - Tuesday 12th January, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Parler sues Amazon for colluding with Twitter to take out a competitor whilst the public scrape 70TB of data before servers were shutdown
- Ubiquiti tells users to reset passwords due to "unauthorised access to certain of our information technology systems"
- CES 2021 again
- In 2013 the USB Implementers Forum lost their damn minds and are yet to seek help for their illness
- Cheap Logitech trackball, Lexar 1TB SD card, 10TB Seagate external HDD, Xiaomi 34" monitor

## The News

### Parler sues Amazon for colluding with Twitter to take out a competitor whilst the public scrape 70TB of data before servers were shutdown

Parler's efforts to reinstate service after getting the arse from AWS isn't going too well, with "every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us, too, on the same day", according to Parler's CEO. Because of this they sued Amazon, alleging that Twitter and Amazon "colluded" to "reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter", violating antitrust laws. Just before Parler was taken offline, donk_enby scraped 70TB of Parler data (posts, videos, images & metadata) for safe-keeping. A neat database of the USA's bigots could come in handy.

### Ubiquiti tells users to reset passwords due to "unauthorised access to certain of our information technology systems"

Ubiquiti sent an email to all its customers saying a third party cloud provider they use got popped which lead to "unauthorised access to certain of our information technology systems" (I think they forgot a word), so as a precaution, suggest changing any Ubiquiti related account passwords and enabling two factor authentication. Ubiquiti is "currently aware of evidence of access to any databases that host user data, but we cannot be certain that user data has not been exposed". This is a bit of an issue as most Ubiquiti site setups are accessed via a Ubiquiti account, even if they're hosted locally, highlighting the thin line between ease of use and security.

### CES 2021 again

- Qualcomm's got a new 2nd-generation under screen fingerprint reader. 77% more fingerprint reading area and 50% faster than the 1st-generation reader that I thought worked pretty well, so this new one must be pretty sweet. Kinda wish Apple would adopt this so people can choose if they want Touch ID or Face ID, particularly with the damn mask bullshit we have going on.
- TCL is going to release an Android tablet using its new NXTPAPER display technology, which is kinda like a colour e-ink screen. Here's a video from a TCL keynote given last year. TCL also showed off a pair of glasses with little OLED screens in them that "produce the effect of viewing a 140-inch display from four meters away, with a density of 49 pixels per degree".
- Spekaing of OLEDs, LG has an OLED monitor coming soon. It's a 31.5" 4K display that does 99% P3 & Adobe RGB with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. No date or price and the size gives a weird 139.87 PPI, but an OLED monitor, nice. There's some new LG OLED TVs too.
- Microsoft has a new Surface Pro 7 "Plus" model for businesses and schools that brings the option for an LTE modem (no 5G?), a removable SSD, slightly larger battery and a range of 11th-gen Intel CPUs. I don't know why they're limiting it to businesses and schools instead of selling direct.
- The X1 range of ThinkPads (X1 Carbon, X1 Yoga) got an update from Lenovo. Not much to see really, just a spec bump to the current Intel 11th-gen CPUs and 16:10 or 3:2 aspect ratio screens. Lovely. Only way they could make the X1 Carbon any better is to give it an AMD Ryzen CPU.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### In 2013 the USB Implementers Forum lost their damn minds and are yet to seek help for their illness

Fabien Sanglard has a quick post about the mess that is USB 3 these days. This shitshow began with the release of "USB 3.1" (10gbit/s USB), which was branded USB 3.1 Gen 2, with USB 3.1 Gen 1 being the previous USB 3.0 (5gbit/s USB). Instead of acknowledging their mistake, the USB-IF called what should be USB 3.2 (20gbit/s USB), USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 and renamed USB 3.1 Gen 2 to be USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 to USB 3.2 Gen 1x1. Now we have USB 4, which comes in two varieties - USB4 Gen 2x2 (20gbit/s USB) and USB4 Gen 3x2 (40gbit/s USB) - with many fancy features, but the features seem to be arbitrary depending on whatever the vendor implements. Ugh.

## Bargains

- Logitech MX Ergo wireless trackball - $101.15 from digiDIRECT
- Lexar 1TB UHS-I SD card - $165 delivered from B&H
- 10TB Seagate external HDD - $244.02 from Amazon US for Prime members
- Xiaomi 34" 3440x1440 144Hz curved monitor - $499 + shipping from PC Byte

## The End

📻 Lost Cause - Cosmic Psychos

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