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Tech Newsletter

March 19-25, 2023

Screenshot vulnerability on Pixel phones and Windows

This vulnerability lets some screenshots be un-cropped. Also if you used the Pixels markup tool, those could also be undone. For example, if you took a picture of your credit card and crossed out the card number. Someone could undo that and see that card number. The reason that this happened is basically the cropped image is stored on top of the uncropped image. The image below shows this explanation pretty well. Luckily, this issue was fixed in the March 2023 security patch. But, this patch is only available to Pixel 4a-5a and 7/7 Pro users. This is also apparent on Windows snipping tool.

“The Completionist” has 100% in the Wii U/3DS eShop

This Youtuber has spent over $22,000 to digitally purchase every Wii U and 3DS game before Nintendo closed their eShop for those consoles on March 27. The process of downloading all of these games took over 300 days from some restrictions that were embedded into the eShop. The reason that he did this was because these games are a piece of history and if the eShop closed and no one downloaded them, they would be lost forever. All of these games would be donated to the Video Game History Foundation. I will link his video which went more in depth about his struggles.

Google’s generative AI “Bard” is now in early access

Bard is Google’s response to Microsoft’s Bing chatbot. While Bing was based off of OpenAI’s GPT-4, Bard is powered off of LaMDA. While both are pretty similar, some users, most notably the popular tech YouTuber MKBHD, like GPT-4 over the LaMDA language model. You can see for yourself at bard.google.com.

One of YouTube’s largest tech creator has been hacked

The tech YouTuber, Linus Sebastian, who runs the channels Linus Tech Tips, Techquickie, Short Circuit, Tech Linked, and more, was hacked. The hacker got in due to a fake sponsorship email that one member of their 100+ team received. The email contained a pdf and when it was clicked appeared to do nothing. But, the malware stole the users browser information which included browser cookies, passwords, and session tokens. What the hacker did was use the session tokens to login to 3 of Linus’s youtube channels and wreak havoc. The channel name was changed to Tesla and a livestream was started. The livestream contained a link which led to a crypto scam. The hacker also mass deleted thousands of old videos. After around a day, everything was back to normal since Linus had kept the original copies of all of his videos. This type of scam was not limited to Linus. Hundreds of other creators have experienced this hack, one of them being the British Army’s YouTube channel, and some have not recovered. More information about Linus’ hack can be found in this link.

More news on the Activision-Blizzard deal

If you haven’t been following this for the past months, here is the breakdown. Microsoft wants to buy the game studio Activision-Blizzard and Sony has been complaining about the deal. Also, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is doing an investigation on whether Microsoft should be allowed to do this. Now that you are up to speed, the UK’s CMA has said it no longer believes that Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard will significantly reduce competition in the console gaming space. The CMA believes that Microsoft would lose more money than it is worth in order to take away games from Playstation. But, weirdly, the CMA has also stated that “Our provisional view that this deal raises concerns in the cloud gaming market is not affected by today’s announcement”. This is interesting since Microsoft has already confirmed that they would bring games to cloud streaming services. Hopefully, this would all end when the CMA’s final report ruling on the Activision Blizzard deal is due by April 26.

Plugins are coming to Chat-GPT

These plugins would increase the capabilities of the chatbot, like allowing it to search the web. Instead of opening Chat-GPT to the web, OpenAI would rather have plugins do it for them. Their reason for this is that it makes it more secure somehow. Third party sources could also make plugins. Imagine asking Chat-GPT about travel information or ordering groceries with Instacart. A hacker has posted on Twitter that claims that there are 80 secret plugins, including Crypto prices plugin. Whether this is true or not will have to be seen but I am looking forward to plugins. Also, if Chat-GPT can search the web, then why would anyone use Bing Chat?

Laptop company Framework announces new laptops

For those who don’t know who Framework is, this is a basic description. Framework is committed to repairability of their laptops. Their laptops have expansion bays that can house any type of I/O, be it USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, and even Ethernet. All of their components are upgradable, including the mainboard, and parts are available on their site. On to the new stuff, their 13 inch laptop can now be equipped with 13th gen Intel and for the first time, AMD Ryzen. Another thing that they announced was a 16 inch version, which is even cooler. The 16 inch has 6 expansion bays rather than 4 and it also has a GPU. The cool part is that the GPU is hot swappable and the GPU bay also acts like a giant expansion bay. While this is not confirmed, the expansion bay could house more storage and maybe even a hot-swappable battery. Another amazing thing is that the keyboard can be moved very easily and you can add a num-pad. I love Frameworks mission of repairability and expandability. Here is Frameworks official blogpost on the laptops. Whenever I am in the market for a laptop, I am going with Framework.