Google Groups is ending support for Usenet to combat spam – BleepingComputer

I signed up for a free Usenet service a while back with the intention of accessing it with Mozilla Thunderbird and see if newsgroups were still useful as a communications medium. After an hour of viewing what has become of Usenet, at least the alt newsgroups, I can very much understand why Google Groups made this decision (strangely enough I thought they stopped supporting Usenet a long time ago but I digress).

Usenet has many of the same problems that email does, with the added bonus of being even more distributed in a “one to many” way of message flow, by design if you think of it as a forum (it is). Usenet’s cracks are too big to patch and smell of rotten spam. There’s better ways to have discussions on the internet now anyway and I just don’t think there’s reason to go back unless everyone wants to content with an overhauled system when they might as well use something like the Fediverse (Mastodon, Firefish, etc).

Usenet was a springboard in the early Internet, but like Gopher, FTP, etc, we’ve evolved passed it.

AI is capable of running entire companies call center scams now.

The source of the image above is here, and yes this is a fax/call center scam site: https://webenvy.io/?page_id=2808

Remember when Mozilla made a web browser? – jwz

I see a possible future where our interaction with data on the internet is through language models exclusively. You will have no choice because your browser will require it and all the open source browsers with poor market share will also not work very well with the new web standards. “WebAI” (let’s just call it that) is on the horizon and right now its looking outright dystopian.

Mozilla pivoting to AI and possibly ditching Firefox? Firefox already has usable forks but what does that really mean for the future whenever everyone is using Chrome (Google) and Edge (Microsoft), content and ad delivery systems with baked in tracking and AI disguised as web browsers?

I think the answer is be aware of this and keep pushing for open source that isn’t tied to a major corporate name.

Chrome/Chromium Emergency Patch

Another day, another emergency patch for the most popular browser family. As of this 10:30 AM Central time I can’t tell if Microsoft Edge is involved.

Google Chrome emergency update fixes 6th zero-day exploited in 2023 – Bleeping Computer

Microsoft’s stable channel release notes very briefly had a November 28th update saying they’re aware of the vulnerability but now that blurb was removed.

File Under Reasons Why Rebooting Fixes Things/And I Miss Windows 2000

This is more true with Windows I think. If you make a major config change and something doesn’t work, give it a reboot. At least you don’t have to restart after changing an IP address like the bad old days of Windows 2000, though I think Windows 2000 was a damn fine operating system.

Sometimes I look back to Windows 2000 and miss the simplicity of an operating system that was an operating system and not a consumer journey experience platform, thing, like what we have now.

… So anyway I switched to linux…..

NASA Computers Were Hardcore

https://history.nasa.gov/computers/contents.html

Good old web page on NASA’s history firing off odd computers into the great unknown. My favorite is the Voyager computers because they’re still kicking to this day.

This is a picture of one of the Voyager’s computer modules. The entire thing was cutting edge for the time, and its architecture not entirely proven.

The second hardware modification to Voyager’s data computer led to a first in spaceflight computing: volatile memory. After the first round of prototype programs, an intermediate hardware design evolved using CMOS ICs⁵¹. This type of circuit is very low powered, fast, and can tolerate a wide range of voltages, making it excellent for space use. Early in the 1970s, CMOS was still relatively new, so it was with some risk that JPL chose the circuits. To go along with the new CMOS processor, the data computer group fought for CMOS memories as well. Trying to drive a slow plated-wire memory with fast CMOS circuits would have negated the attempt to speed up the computer. However, CMOS memories are volatile, in that if power is cut off, the data stored in them disappear. The designers of previous manned and unmanned spacecraft avoided volatile memories, fearing that power transients would destroy the memories at critical mission times. Voyager management had to be convinced that the risk was acceptable.

https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-2.html

But it turned out to be a good risk, and they still get the occasional patch:

NASA’s Voyager Team Focuses on Software Patch, Thrusters – nasa.gov

Already Feeling Nostalgic for DEF CON 31.

After only attending DEF CON online during the covid lockdown, DEF CON 31 was my first time being there in person. The thing I enjoyed most was walking around with some SAO boards I built myself. This adapter is already obsolete but I wonder if DEF CON might bring the modular approach back again next year? Here’s hoping.

TTFN!