Welcome to issue #10 of the Dithering Digest Weekly Tech Roundup of geeky news and links.
Happy New Year! It is set to be a really exciting year in tech with the ramping up of AI, possibly more advances in Quantum computing and nuclear fusion is only 10 years away (still).
So enjoy the first round up of 2024. I have only been back to work a handful of days and I feel like I need a break already!
Light-based Wi-Fi could be up to 100 times faster
I recall reading about this a few years back but hadn’t heard any progress since. It seems that advances in OLED (organic LED) tech and coupled with organic photodiodes to detect the light, could allow for data transmission using visible light for massively increased data transfer. The light being used to transmit the data would be imperceptible to humans, allowing light fittings to act as network access points. Not sure how you will watch Netflix in bed at night though….
Tweak TikTok For You Page to better suit your preferences
As someone who spends more time than I would like to admit on TikTok (consuming only), having the For You page tailored better to what I actually want to see is a big deal. This article has definitely helped me weed out some stuff I had no use for.
🔗 https://www.makeuseof.com/tiktok-fyp-change-to-fit-your-preferences/
Malware able to log into Google accounts after password resets
This one is a tale of caution. More and more malware contains “info stealers” which scours your computer for useful data to send back to the hackers servers. Among the data grabbed are cookies and other log in credentials. Once they have your Google OAuth token they can log in as you. Even if you realise and change your password, they will continue to have access unless you log out and choose to revoke all sessions. If you suspect you have been hacked, this is solid advice.
🔗 https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/02/infostealer_google_account_exploit/
Scientists discover the data format we use to store images in our brain
Anything involving neuroscience is cool in my book. Scientists used a combination of fMRI scanner experiments to document the relationship between seeing and recalling images. Turns out I don’t store them as JPEGs.
🔗 https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/02/dartmouth_visua_brain_memory/
Fusions future is looking bright
US scientists managed to produce “ignition” several times recently, meaning they produced more energy than they put into a fusion system. There is still a long way to go before commercial energy production but hopefully they will be given the budget to continue this important work. Fusion seems like the Holy Grail of clean energy production and at this point is critical to our near term fight for climate control.
🔗 https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/02/fusions_future_is_looking_bright
Orange Spain outage after hack - dumb password to blame
Orange Spain suffered a large outage that affected traffic on up to half of their network. It appears that an info-stealer malware on an employees computer grabbed the password to their RIPE account (RIPE is the master database of IP addresses and their owners for Europe, Middle East and Central Asia. The American equivalent is called ARIN). Getting access to this is a big deal. And the password? “ripeadmin”
You couldn’t make it up!
🔗 https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/04/orange_spain_outage_breach/
Radxa launches low-cost Intel Celeron based SBC
Single Board Computers are everywhere now since popularisation from the beloved Raspberry Pi series. This one looks particularly interesting as it runs x86-64 software (unlike the majority of SBCs which are based on ARM processors). This opens up a lot of options for running software including many versions of Linux and even Windows 10 (and possibly 11 with some tinkering). And the best part is that it seems very affordable. Looks like it will be a useful tool for any home lab.
Computer Joke of the Week
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
None, it’s a hardware problem.
If you have any cool projects or tinkering you are doing, let us know and we will feature it in future issues of the digest. I would love to hear what you are all dithering on!
Until next week, happy dithering!
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