Synology Intends to Restrict Your Freedom of Choice
18 April 2025
The astonishing hubris of Synology’s decision to require their self-branded hard drives, which are merely white-labeled WD Reds, is an egregious incursion on user’s right to choose. The best decision users can make is to refuse to use Synology products.
Source: Ars Technica
Meta Intentionally Violated User Privacy with Browser Backdoor
3 June 2025
It has long been know that Meta/Facebook has gone to great lengths to get their “pixel” tracker embedded in every possible web page. But their latest abuse of users demonstrates a gross lack of ethical judgment. By exploiting the ability of browsers to connect to locally hosted services, Meta knowingly and willfully ignored every indication that a user wanted privacy by breaking out of sand-boxed environments, bypassing history/cookie preferences and DNS sink-holes, and tracking user activity even in privacy mode, sending all of your seemingly private data back to their servers in order to service advertisers and data brokers.
Source: Local Mess
Bill Atkinson, creator of the Mac GUI, dead at 74
8 June 2025
Rectangles with round corners don’t seem like a big deal today, but before the technique for drawing them on a computer display was invented by Bill Atkinson, some, including the inventor himself, had deemed it impossible. Bill was a pioneer of the GUI and his techniques will forever influence human interfaces.
Source: Thurrott
Microsoft Used China-Based Engineers to Support SharePoint Recently Hacked by China
1 August 2025
Chinese state-sponsored hackers exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft SharePoint to breach hundreds of organizations, including key U.S. government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Despite Microsoft issuing an initial patch, the attackers bypassed it, prompting the need for a second fix. But the original vulnerability may be related to the China-based engineers Microsoft employed to maintain SharePoint due to potential legal obligations those workers may have to the Chinese government. In other words, did Microsoft’s lax security culture allow the Chinese government to insert the vulnerability into SharePoint by coercing the China-based engineers, thereby allowing Chinese intelligence agencies to exfiltrate sensitive data from key U.S. government agencies?
Source: ProPublica, Natto Thoughts
AOL Announces September Shutdown of Dial-up Internet Service
11 August 2025
I signed up for America Online dial-up Internet service in early 1997 shortly after the company announced unlimited, flat-fee access for just $19.99 per month. The move was unprecedented at the time. Not only could you stay connected for as long as you wanted, but anyone that could afford a computer could afford Internet access. At its peak, AOL had around 24 million monthly subscribers paying for the privilege. But the end of an era has arrived with AOL announcing today that dial-up service will be discontinued on September 30, 2025.
Source: Ars Technica