Back in 2016, Apple was caught bricking devices that had previously been repaired by third-party companies. The company initially attempted to claim it had performed this task for the good of users in the name of security before reversing course. Apple has long attempted to maintain that customers must use authorized repair centers, in flagrant violation of US (and Australian) law. Now the company appears to be up to its old tricks again. According to , the iOS 11.3 update that Apple released in March is now killing touchscreen functionality in devices that were previously repaired by third parties.
The Nintendo has been a hit for Nintendo, one that it sorely needed after disappointing sales of the Wii U console. There are even some hints that Nintendo is coming around to online services. However, it still won’t let you back up your saved games. One industrious console hacker is showing Nintendo how easy it can be. Bernardo Giordano says it to add game backups to the Switch. Game backups are important on all platforms. After all, once you’ve spent 100 hours exploring an in-game world, losing your progress because of a hardware failure could be heartbreaking. The situation is even more dire with the Switch.
You have undoubtedly seen the moon, but have you ever seen it up close in glorious 4K resolution? Probably not, but you can see it right now on YouTube. has uploaded a new video, created mostly from the (LRO) observations. The video takes you on a tour of several different regions, some of which still present tantalizing mysteries for future exploration. The LRO has been orbiting the moon since 2009, sending back the highest quality images we’ve ever had of the lunar surface. The spacecraft’s main imaging device consists of several different cameras, all of which have contributed to the new video.
AMD technically just launched a new lineup of GPUs this week, but don’t worry if you can’t find them on store shelves. The new 500X family adds an “X” to the brand of each previous Radeon card. The Radeon RX 580 is now the RX 580X, the 570 is the 570X, etc, etc, right on down the stack. But that’s literally the only changes to these cards. The RX 580X is an RX 580. The RX 570X is an RX 570. The RX 560X is… you get it. Gamers tend to dislike these periodic rebranding efforts, but they’ve been a feature (or “feature”) of the GPU market for decades.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is kind of a big deal at the moment. The Battle Royale-style shooter has been challenged by games like Fortnite, but the two titles are different enough that they’ve each maintained distinct play styles and strategies. As with any multiplayer game, there’s an ongoing war of attrition between people who want to cheat in PUBG and players who want a balanced game. Personally, I come down hard on the side of keeping games honest. I love modding — it’s one of the core reasons I prefer gaming on a PC to playing on a console — but only in single-player titles.
We’ve discussed Intel’s fixes for Meltdown and Spectre many times over the past few months. AMD’s overall exposure to these specific flaws is known to be lower, but the smaller CPU manufacturer has taken more time to deliver certain fixes than Intel has. Today, solutions for AMD CPUs are also starting to roll out, courtesy of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday. First, a bit of primer. Variant 1 and Variant 2 apply to ; the Variant 3 attack is classified as and did not impact AMD CPUs. AMD has previously distributed patches for Variant 1 via Microsoft, but Variant 2 required a heavier lift for both Intel and AMD.
SpaceX has big plans for Mars, some of which seem profoundly difficult to accomplish. The company has a goal of building a colony of 1 million people on Mars in the next few decades. The chance that SpaceX can reach the red planet and begin colonization drops to zero if it can’t get a larger, more powerful rocket up and running. It’s making good progress, though. Elon Musk recently revealed tooling for the BFR, and it’s big. Announced in September 2017, (which stands for Big Falcon Rocket) will eventually take over from the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.
Most malware attacks rely on fooling users into launching a corrupted executable file, and online criminals have come up with plenty of ways to do that. There’s a new piece of making the rounds online via hacked websites that uses sophisticated redirects and modified JavaScript to load a malicious payload on your computer. , there are probably thousands of affected sites. The attack most likely began late last year, and some site operators began noticing something was afoot in February. Sites using WordPress, SquareSpace, and Joomla content management systems have been targeted by the group behind this so-called “FakeUpdates campaign.
With the Cambridge Analytica scandal still roiling, Silicon Valley companies have collectively just discovered that privacy is something they care about. Valve, which owns the Steam gaming service that dominates PC game distribution, has announced a new set of privacy changes that give users more control over their profiles, and a greater ability to hide what other people see in them. Unfortunately, one side effect of these changes means the end of the Steam Spy service. Valve describes the new policy changes : You can now select who can view your profile’s “game details”; which includes the list of games you have purchased or wishlisted, along with achievements and playtime.
