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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 05 - 10 FEBRUARY, 2024
Hello and Welcome,
Meeting This Week
2024/02/06 — 18:00-20:00 — February, Tue — Main Meeting
Meetings Next Week
2024/02/13 — 18:00-20:00 — February, Tue — Programming
2024/02/17 — 14:00-16:00 — February, Sat — Web Design
Schedule of Current & Upcoming Meetings
First Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Main Meeting
First Saturday 13:00-14:00 — Penrith Group
Second Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Programming
Third Tuesday 10:00-12:00 — Tuesday Group
Third Saturday 14:00-16:00 — Web Design
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Go to the official Sydney PC Calendar for this month's meeting details.
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Penrith meetings are held every 2nd month on the 1st Saturday from 1-2 pm.
The next scheduled meetings are in March, May and July 2024.
ASCCA News:Tech News:
Ten Things to Know Before Buying a Foldable Phone
See the How-To Geek article by BERTEL KING | PUBLISHED 30 January 2024.
Foldable phones cost more than flagships, but that doesn't mean they're better.
Are you interested in buying one of those fancy foldable phones? There are some valid concerns that you may have about it. We'll address those worries before you fork over the extra cash, and share some unexpected benefits.
You Will Notice the Crease in the Display
Crease in the Display
A foldable phone, when unfolded, has much more screen real estate than a standard slab. That's the entire point of a foldable screen. But that doesn't mean you will necessarily appreciate gaming or watching videos on the foldable more than you would on a more rigid phone. Why? Because the area where the phone bends comes with a distinct crease.
Is a crease the end of the world? Hardly. Some people stop noticing the bulge after a while. Others, however, find it something they can't un-see. It's something you will almost certainly feel with your finger while moving around the touchscreen, but it's not visually noticeable most of the time.
The Screen is More Fragile
The foldable screen doesn't just come with a crease — it's also more prone to scratches and cracks. Introducing more moving parts leads to a more delicate design, but that's not the only issue here. Flexible displays don't come with the level of protection you get from the latest Gorilla Glass. If you scratch a key against a foldable and a non-foldable display, the foldable screen will show scratches far sooner.
Even if you're particularly careful with your device, some foldables fall victim to damage from small particles like sand getting caught between the screen when it folds. Newer devices are more resilient than earlier generations, but they still need to be protected, and you want to be especially careful when shopping on the second-hand market. Fortunately, you may still be able to fix your damaged screen. For example, Samsung has started selling replacement parts for foldables.
You Will Pay a Premium
If you're interested in foldable phones, you already know that they cost more than their non-folding counterparts. The Pixel Fold, for example, launched at a staggering $1,799. That was over twice as much as a regular Pixel 8 and, frankly, not far off from being twice the price of a Pixel 8 Pro.
The Pixel Fold is not unusual in that regard. Whether you buy your foldable from Samsung or OnePlus, you can expect it to cost significantly more than their flagship devices. And as I'll talk about later in this article, that higher price doesn't always mean you're getting the best specs the company offers.
Flipping Open a Phone Gets Old
You may be interested in the modern flip-style foldable phones that replicate a form factor that has been around for decades. That means the format could be better for using phones today. In the past, you flipped open your phone a few times a day to place a call or send a text. That was about it.
Now, you may flip open your phone to check the weather, edit your playlist, watch a YouTube clip, or open GPS instructions. The list goes on. We use our devices so much more than we used to, and opening your phone first can take time and effort. However, this may be a plus if you're looking for ways to reduce your screen-on time.
Foldable Phones Can Be Bulky
A book-style foldable is a chunkier device than you might be used to carrying. Sometimes, it may feel like carrying two phones in your pocket at once — because you are pretty much. A phone that can transform into a tablet has to store that big screen somewhere.
Manufacturers have been working to make foldable thinner, partly by making the actual hardware smaller and by reducing the gap between the display when closed. Yet, if you value having a thin device over all else, it's hard for two screens to compete against one. Foldables are improving in this regard, but we're not quite there yet.
Also, Less Bulky
On the other hand, flip-style foldables like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip are much more pocketable than a standard smartphone. They are half the height of a regular phone when folded.
Now that foldables can run complete apps on their exterior screen while closed, as is the case with the Moto Razr+ and the Z as mentioned above, flip-style foldables have become the new tiny phone. While folding phones introduce many issues that "boring" phones don't have, pocketability is a valid selling point.
You Might Settle For Inferior Cameras
For all that money, it's perfectly reasonable to think that a foldable is a company's flagship, the most powerful and capable device in its lineup. That's not the case. While foldables haven't sacrificed much regarding processors or RAM, virtually all have come with inferior cameras to their slab equivalents.
Smartphone makers only have a little space to work with on regular phones, and the situation gets even more complicated once you add space for hinges. Then, you have to consider how much bulk you are willing to add to what may already be a bulky device.
For example, the Pixel Fold has a 48MP primary camera, 10.8MP telephoto camera, and 10.8MP wide-angle camera. Meanwhile, the Pixel 8 Pro has a 50MP main camera, 48MP telephoto camera, and 48MP wide-angle camera.
The Software Experience Isn't as Polished
Book-style foldable phones suffer from an issue that has long plagued tablets and Android devices using anything other than a standard phone-sized screen. That's the need for more app support. While most Google apps will adjust to a larger screen just fine, a lot of third-party software won't. This includes many mainstream apps, like official social networking clients and video streaming apps. You can use them side-by-side on an unfolded phone, but expect vertical letterboxing when launching a single app on a larger screen.
Book-style foldables have also experimented with various ways to use their additional screen real estate. Most introduce docks. Some have floating windows. Mostly, these features are nice value-adds, but you can expect some quirks along the way.
A Book-Style Foldable Is a More Portable Tablet
Lest you think it's all bad, consider this: a book-style foldable's interior screen is similar to a tablet's. Sure, that extra inch does make a tablet a better viewing experience, but the screen on a foldable is still much larger than that on your standard slab. That gives you more screen real estate for showing people photos or watching movies together.
A foldable is much more portable than a tablet. So, even if you already have a tablet at home, just like with cameras, the best tablet is the one you have on you. After a while, you may find that your foldable has entirely replaced your need for a tablet.
A Foldable Is Its Own Stand
A Foldable Is Its Own Stand
A larger screen is one of many benefits of having a flexible display. The presence of a hinge gives your phone the ability to function more as a laptop. That means when watching a video, you can tilt up the top half of the screen while the device rests on its bottom half. This is another way a book-style foldable surpasses tablets for consuming media. No matter where you are and whether you have any accessories on you, a foldable is always ready.
Smartphone design has become predictable, which makes foldables exciting to watch. But there's a reason smartphones are staying the same. The standard format is excellent. Foldables have their perks, but they also have cons that still make them not quite ready to dominate.
The Latest attack on Microsoft was much worse than initially disclosed
See the iTWire article by Sam Varghese | Monday, 29 January 2024, at 10:07 am.
Microsoft has issued a second post about the attack on its systems by an alleged Russian actor, revealing that the same actor also attacked several other organisations, one of which was HPE [ Hewlett Packard Enterprise — Ed. ].
Former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos, who has criticised Microsoft for the lack of detail in its first blog post about the attack, said the other companies were compromised using the same flaws in Azure Active Directory.
"Microsoft's language [in the second blog post] plays this up as a big favour they are doing the ecosystem by sharing their 'extensive knowledge of Midnight Blizzard', when, in fact, what they are announcing is that this breach has affected multiple tenants of their cloud products," Stamos said in a LinkedIn post.
Microsoft made its first post about the attack on 19 January, saying that the attackers in question had been in its systems for nearly two months before they had been detected.
This is the second time in recent times that foreign actors have spent long periods within Microsoft's corporate networks without being detected.
In July last year, a breach of Microsoft's Azure cloud led to the compromise of email accounts belonging to American envoy to Beijing, Nicholas Burns, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink and US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, among others.
Security experts warned that the effect of the intrusion could be much broader than reported and could affect applications beyond those claimed to be impacted by Microsoft.
Last November, Microsoft released a blog post claiming the company had implemented a Secure Future Initiative, which it described as a "new initiative to pursue our next generation of cybersecurity protection."
British security expert Kevin Beaumont said he had concluded that the reality of everything at Microsoft was too complex. "Lots of MS things ship in risky configurations, nobody (including Microsoft) can figure out how to scale securing it, and everything is way too expensive, he said.
"Microsoft's two biggest commercial security risks are ransomware groups, and /itself/."
"They've gone from saying attackers think in graphs to getting attackers to live on the Microsoft Graph, which has allowed them to monetise their cloud security failures."
Stamos said the second blog post about the latest attack had also clarified how an attack against a legacy non-production test tenant could lead to accessing the emails of key Microsoft executives.
The post said: "Midnight Blizzard leveraged their initial access to identify and compromise a legacy test OAuth application that had elevated access to the Microsoft corporate environment. The actor created additional malicious OAuth applications."
"They created a new user account to grant consent to the actor-controlled malicious OAuth applications in the Microsoft corporate environment. The threat actor then used the legacy test OAuth application to grant them the Office 365 Exchange Online full_access_as_app role, which allows access to mailboxes."
Stamos said AzureAD was overly complex and lacked an interface that allowed administrators to quickly understand the web of security relationships and dependencies that attackers were becoming accustomed to exploiting.
"In many organisations, AzureAD is deployed in hybrid mode, which combines the vulnerability of cloud (external password sprays) and on-premise (NTLM, mimikatz) identity technologies in a combination that smart attackers utilize to bounce between domains, escalate privilege and establish persistence," he explained.
"Calling this a 'legacy' tenant is a dodge; this system was configured to allow production access as of a couple of weeks ago, and Microsoft must secure their legacy products and tenants just as well as ones provisioned today."
"It's unclear what they mean by 'legacy', but whatever Microsoft's definition is, it is likely to represent how thousands of their customers are utilizing their products."
He also accused Microsoft of using its security flaws to upsell, citing three sentences from the second blog as evidence.
"These sentences in the blog post deserve a nomination to the Cybersecurity Chutzpah Hall of Fame, as Microsoft recommends that potential victims of this attack against their cloud-hosted infrastructure," Stamos wrote.
The sentences he cited were:
— "Detect, investigate, and remediate identity-based attacks using solutions like Microsoft Entra ID Protection;"
— "Investigate compromised accounts using Microsoft Purview Audit (Premium);" and
— "Enforce on-premises Microsoft Entra Password Protection for Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services."
Stamos said Microsoft was using the blog post to upsell customers on their security products, "which are necessary to run their identity and collaboration products safely!"
"This is morally indefensible, just as it would be for car companies to charge for seat belts or airoplane manufacturers to charge for properly tightened bolts," he added.
Fun Facts:
No more NUC: Intel's weirdly named mini PCs seem to be going away
See the ArsTechnica article by ANDREW CUNNINGHAM | 12 July 2023, 6:51 am.
Intel NUCs
Intel has exited several side businesses as it tries to stop losing money.
Since 2012, Intel has designed and sold its own lineup of mini PCs. The Next Unit of Computing series (NUC—rhymes with yuck [ I prefer rhyming with "NUKE" — Ed ]) always most closely resembled Mac mini-like desktops. Still, over the years, it grew to encompass compact workstations, gaming systems, and mini servers with multiple Ethernet ports.
But Intel is throwing in the towel on the NUC, according to a statement given to The Verge earlier today.
Intel spokesperson Mark Walton said that Intel had "decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth." This statement leaves some wiggle room — Intel could still work with partners to bring NUCs or NUC-like products to market — but it seems like the days of Intel designing its own desktop computers are over.
Walton also said that Intel planned to continue "ongoing support for NUC products currently in the market," so it sounds like owners of current NUC systems should still be able to get driver and BIOS updates and warranty support for the foreseeable future.
Based on a third-generation Intel Core chip using the Ivy Bridge architecture, the first NUC came out as Intel leaned hard into its then-new "ultrabook" initiative. A response to Apple's MacBook Air, Intel gave PC companies part of a $300 million fund to develop new laptops that combined low-voltage (but relatively high-performance) processors, fast solid-state storage, and thin-and-light designs not weighed down by legacy parts like built-in DVD drives. Twelve years later, you still see the ultrabook designation tossed around. Still, MacBook Air-style laptops have so thoroughly taken over the portable PC market that an "ultrabook" and a "normal laptop" are more or less indistinguishable in most cases.
The NUC was an effort to bring the speed, size, and low power usage of an ultrabook into the desktop realm, replacing boxy, ugly office desktops with something you could hold in the palm of your hand. NUC-style mini PCs didn't take over the desktop market like ultrabooks came to dominate the laptop market. However, the NUC is still survived by a large ecosystem of similarly tiny PCs, many of which are ultimately cheaper and easier to buy than most NUCs. Models include but are not limited to Dell's Optiplex Micro, Lenovo's ThinkCentre Tiny, HP's ProDesk and EliteDesk Mini systems, Gigabyte's Brix systems, several models from PC motherboard-makers like Asus and ASRock, and Apple's Mac mini and Mac Studio.
The end of the NUC is due at least in part to Intel's recent financial struggles — the company has had a few rough quarters since the end of the pandemic-era PC boom, losing billions of dollars as its consumer, workstation, and server businesses all falter. The company has already instituted layoffs and cut executive pay in response, and it announced plans to sell its pre-built server business in April.
Although Intel is still investing in a few product lines that aren't processors — the company has said it's still committed to its nascent GPU business — CEO Pat Gelsinger is betting the company's future on his "IDM 2.0" strategy, in which Intel offers its chip manufacturing facilities to third-party chip designers. This will put Intel in competition with Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC), Samsung, and GlobalFoundries.
Working with NUCs
Trying out a NUC lookalike is excellent fun.
I was impressed with the details of various NUC lookalikes on the Amazon webpage.
As mentioned in the article above, the original INTEL NUCs are relatively expensive, but the latest lookalike offerings are affordable.
See the Beelink page:
Beelink NUC
On an excellent Desktop replacement, this is amazing. The 32 GB and 1 TB SSD model, at $439, gives an outstanding work or home computer at half the price of an average Desktop (~$1,000).
I ordered the INTEL version 13 (from GEEKOM) with similar specs but chose the faster i9 CPU instead of the i7.
Geekom
I am on Amazon's "Next day delivery" plan, so online shopping was very convenient.
A couple of days later, I received an email from AWS (Amazon) saying, "Based on your recent activity, we thought you might be interested in this."
The very thing that I wanted was a memory upgrade since some programs I was running stopped for want of memory.
And, of course, it was the exact match to the NUC I had bought. There's nothing worse than guessing the memory speed and type and having to pick these from a glossy online catalogue.
The two sticks of 32 GB memory duly arrived on Sunday afternoon — the NUC memory slides in and out very quickly, even more straightforward than on a Desktop motherboard. The NUC booted up nicely with 64 GB of memory into Windows 11 Pro.
With regular Pitt Street meetings happening again, I can demonstrate the amazing NUC.
PS: Here's an interesting thought: The Club could replace its Desktop Computer and Trolley with a much smaller box containing the Projector and a Mini PC.
— Ed.
Meeting Location & Disclaimer
Bob Backstrom
~ Newsletter Editor ~
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