Dithering Digest 18 - Weekly Tech Roundup

Welcome to issue #18 of the Dithering Digest Weekly Tech Roundup of geeky news and links.

This week I have been messing around with Hugo Static Site Generator with the plans to move the site from WordPress to Hugo. I think the static files should make the site load a lot faster and allows me to write my posts in Markdown using Obsidian. If the site looks visually different you will know I got it working :)

This week we have some tips for improving your internet safety, iOS 17.4 features listing, US Congress pushing through a bill with an amino ban TikTok and a look at what things could have been like in Microsoft went with OS/2 instead of Windows.

Have a lovely weekend, and enjoy the links.

Best DNS Servers for online safety

Keeping yourself safe online has never been more important. You may also want to shield your children from the darker side of the web. Using some of these free DNS services can vastly improve your safety and even increase the speed of browsing by ad-blocking. An hour to read the article and implement it is well worth your time.

🔗 https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-dns-providers-security/

UK Council offline after “cyber incident”

Leicester City Council has taken down their IT systems and phone lines following a “cyber incident”. No more details given than that. Let’s hope everyone still gets their bins collected!

🔗 https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/12/leicester_city_council_stays_shtum/

What if Microsoft hadn’t made Windows?

“The Future That Never Was” is a great article by Michal Necasek taking a look at OS/2, which Microsoft had developed to replace DOS but ultimately ended up making Windows instead. This is a visual tour of what could have been. Fascinating!

Screenshot of Microsoft OS 2 showing a Mac like desktop

🔗 http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-future-that-never-was/

All the new features in iOS 17.4

iOS 17.4 is the strangest release of iOS I think we have ever had. For those in the EU it is a massive game-changing release. For the rest of us, not so much.

For an overview of what is new and a look at what all those lucky EU citizens get to play with, have a read at the article from HowToGeek.

🔗 https://www.howtogeek.com/ios-174-how-to-use-all-the-new-iphone-features/

US Congress passes bill to ban TikTok

Looks like the US Congress are dead set on banning TikTok, unless it is sold off by Chinese owner ByteDance. This is despite protests from US users who love the app.

It will be interesting to see how this one shakes out and how many other countries will follow suit.

🔗 https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/us_congress_passes_tiktok_ban/

Raspberry Pi OS 5.2 released

Kernel 6.6, Chromium 122 and Firefox 123 and some firmware updates. Along with small tweaks to the Wayland-based desktop, this looks like a nice polishing release.

🔗 https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/raspberry_pi_os_52_is/

Computer Joke of the Week

In order to understand recursion you must first understand recursion

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!