Personal Tech

• Dependable Debian is like a rock in a swirling gyre of 'move fast and break things', and version 11 is no different

  A lot of effort has gone into this release and it shows – everything 'just works'
  Scott Gilbertson Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 08:30 UTC

  

  Hands on The Debian 11 is the venerable Debian Project's first new release in more than two years, nicknamed "Bullseye" after the Toy Story character and supplanting Debian 10 "Buster" (all Debian releases bear names from the kids' film).

  Since Debian is the source from which dozens of other distros draw, notably Ubuntu, its major updates are well worth paying attention to, even if you aren't a Debian user. If you are a Debian user and you've been patiently waiting for an updated kernel to work with all the latest hardware, I have good news, the 5.10 LTS Linux kernel is here. More on that in a minute.

  First, for the Linux newcomers, it might help to understand why Debian only releases new versions every couple of years when most popular distros crank out several new versions each year.

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• Bad Apple Safari update breaks IndexedDB JavaScript API, upsets web apps

  Developers fed up with iGiant neglecting non-native software
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 07:29 UTC

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  Apple's WebKit team has managed to break the popular IndexedDB JavaScript API in the latest version of Safari (14.1.1) on macOS 11.4 and iOS 14.6.

  The bug, first reported on June 2, 2021, only manifests when applications first try to use IndexedDB NoSQL manager to store data. Reloading a web page or app implementing the API resolves the issue, according to several bug reports.

  Nonetheless, the situation is less than ideal for web developers and for anyone using the desktop or mobile versions of Safari. While there are a variety of storage APIs available to web developers, IndexedDB is one of two (the other being the Cache Storage API) that's recommended; the other options have specific use cases, shortcomings, or aren't widely supported.

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• China launching first crew to its own space station on Thursday

  Plans four crewed missions to assemble “heavenly palace”
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 06:58 UTC

  

  China will on Thursday launch a crew of three on a mission to start assembling the nation’s first space station.

  State-run media has named the three taikonauts as Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo. Nie will command the mission and make his third journey into space.

  The crew will stay aloft for three months and work on China’s Tiangong space station, the first module of which — named “Tianhe” — launched in April 2021. It caused a kerfuffle when bits of the rocket that carried it made an uncontrolled re-entry that just missed the Maldives.

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• Funny how Sir Tim Berners-Lee, famous for hyperlinks, is into NFTs, glorified hyperlinks

  Source code auction 'similar to selling an autograph copy of a book'
  Katyanna Quach Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 06:27 UTC

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  Internet trailblazer Sir Tim Berners-Lee is auctioning off a link to his very early World Wide Web browser and server source code in the form of a non-fungible token.

  Yup, another NFT. These are tokens that are embedded in a blockchain, and can be sold for millions and exchanged between traders. Buyers really aren't getting much. Typically, the data they paid for isn't actually stored in a blockchain, they just get a token, and the tokens include a link to the material they represent that anyone can see and access. It's a receipt stored in an append-only database. You're essentially bagging bragging rights for stuff that's public.

  And in the case of Sir Tim's code, it's definitely public: you can find at least his earliest WWW browser code here for free, web server code here for free, and the first website he crafted at CERN recreated here for free.

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• China's latest online crackdown targets mean girl online fan clubs that turn toxic

  China’s fan economy is the new business model for artists and brands - and it sometimes gets ugly
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 05:55 UTC

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  China is trying to make its cyberspace a bit kinder and is targeting a phenomenon appealing largely but not solely to female teenagers known as "fan quan", or fan clubs, to do so.

  The campaign known as “Clear and Bright,” initiated by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), started yesterday and will continue for the next two months.

  Fan quan see a great many - sometimes millions - of a celebrity or brand’s followers congregate to form an online gang that sometimes descends into abusive language, doxxing, and other aggressive behaviors in an effort to promote their chosen celebrity over others. Beyond simply fighting for their chosen celebrity, the largely underaged members often donate money to their idol of choice.

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• Calendly’s new logo perceived as either bog-standard or kind of crappy

  New design leads the eye from the throne to the sewer, allegedly cost $1.5m
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 04:59 UTC

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  LogoWatch Online scheduling service Calendly has updated its logo and attracted some criticism because it looks, well, a bit shit.

  Here’s the logo for you to consider.

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• Indian tax authorities summon Infosys to explain glitchy tax portal’s glitches

  Services giant given a week’s notice of interrogation as e-tax service continues to splutter
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 04:01 UTC

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  Infosys has been hauled in by India’s Ministry of Finance to explain the glitchy e-tax system it developed for the nation.

  The portal was launched on June 8th, with much ministerial fanfare about how it would benefit India.

  The next day government figures stopping smiling, because the portal proved significantly sub-optimal. India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called out Infosys in tweets.

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• Alibaba suffers billion-item data leak of usernames and mobile numbers

  Shopping service Taobao scraped by affiliate marketer; developer and boss jailed
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 03:14 UTC

  

  Alibaba’s Chinese shopping operation Taobao has suffered a data breach of over a billion data points including usernames and mobile phone numbers. The info was lifted from the site by a crawler developed by an affiliate marketer.

  Chinese outlet 163.com reported the case last week and today it was picked up by the Wall Street Journal.

  Both reports state that a developer created a crawler that was able to reach beneath information available to the human eye on Taobao, and that the crawler operated for several months before Alibaba noticed the effort.

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• VMware’s ESXi-on-Arm adds support for two-socket servers, Nvidia boards

  Ampere gets more love and the Raspberry Pi gets some stability tweaks for you virtual adventurers out there
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 01:39 UTC

  

  VMware’s unsupported version of its ESXi hypervisor for Arm platforms has been updated with support for two-socket servers and Nvidia's Arm-flexing development boards.

  The previous version of ESXi-on-Arm “Fling” that VMware offers to the curious willing to work without a safety net added support for Ampere’s server-class Arm processors. Now version 1.4 adds support for Ampere’s Mount Jade reference platform for two-socket servers. VMware hasn’t yet got the code running across NUMA nodes, so even though Mount Jade can handle a pair of Ampere’s 80-core Altra processors, it’s only possible to create a VM that uses half of the total possible core count “at this time.”

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• Big Tech critic Lina Khan confirmed as FTC chairwoman

  Promises to 'safeguard fair competition and protect consumers, workers, and honest businesses ... with vigor'
  Katyanna Quach Wed 16 Jun 2021 // 00:38 UTC

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  US President Joe Biden has successfully installed Lina Khan, a top legal scholar and an outspoken critic of Big Tech, as the new chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission.

  The Biden administration made it clear it wants to crack down on the monopolistic power held by mega-corps when he nominated Khan to lead America's trade watchdog in March. Now, the Senate has voted 69-28 in favor of her nomination on Tuesday. The bipartisan support signals Democrats and Republicans support a tough approach to taking on Big Tech.

  Khan, right now an associate law professor at Columbia Law School, has close ties with the FTC. She previously worked there as a legal fellow in 2018 under Commissioner Rohit Chopra. She also counselled the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law in 2019, where she led its investigation into digital markets.

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• What Microsoft's Windows 11 will probably look like

  Leak of glossy makeover turns hype up to ... you get the idea
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Tue 15 Jun 2021 // 23:23 UTC

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  Microsoft's Windows 11, expected to debut at a company event scheduled for June 24, has leaked online and is now appearing in screenshots on various websites.

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