Tech News of the Week 09-03-2024

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Announcer: Welcome to Tech News of the Week with your host, Yo Mama.

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Ned: Welcome to Tech News of the Week. This is our weekly Tech News Roundup, where Chris and I highlight four stories that we found interesting in the past week. I'm going to get us started with Microsoft says, MFA for everyone. From the, I can't believe this wasn't already a requirement Department, stealing your stick, Chris. Starting in October, which is the best month for obvious reasons that aren't Halloween, Microsoft will require all Azure customers to have MFA enabled on their account. The first phase of the enforcement will include logging into the Azure portal, the Entra Admin Center, and the Intune Admin Center. Why the change? Security, of course. According to research by Microsoft, implementing MFA leads to a 99.22% reduction in the risk of compromise across the entire population. Even if credentials have been leaked, MFA is still found to be 98.56% effective. Still, this represents a sea change over at Microsoft, which currently supports more than 1 million Entra ID tenants. They gave everyone the heads up back in May that this was coming, and like I said, phase one is focused on the portal and UI access. Phase 2, currently planned for early 2025, will enforce MFA requirements for programmatic access like the Azure CLI, PowerShell, and Infrastructure's Code tools.

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Ned: If you're a global admin in Azure, you've already been bombarded with messages warning about this change, so consider yourself amply warned yet again. Here's to a slightly more secure Microsoft, accepting all the other vulnerabilities and zero-day that I'm sure we'll cover next week.

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Chris: Vmware Explorer was this past week. Exploring the end of VMware, apparently. So VMware Explorer happened this past week, and I didn't go. I stopped going to these a decade ago when they, or I, or both stopped being fun. I was, in fact, real close to writing a, I didn't go to this conference, so you don't have to, main article about it, but I didn't. Cool story.

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Ned: Totally.

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Chris: The event seemed like it was fine. Maybe fine minus. Right off the top, CEO, Hawk Tan, was taking shots at the public cloud for being, get this shit, costly and complex to navigate. Hilarious.

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Ned: Pot kettle. Yeah.

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Chris: There are plenty of people with things to sell and blogs to sell them on that are all over the Internet talking about how great the conference was, but it does seem that in one conference goer's words, Broadcom did their best to alienate the entire community. Cool.

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Ned: Great.

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Chris: The price was higher, The Expo was apparently significantly smaller, and in a huge insult to Ned, it seems like the swag was, quote, pathetic.

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Ned: How dare they?

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Chris: How many USB fans does one adult who walks around in public wearing a backpack actually need?

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Ned: Sixteen. I'm glad you asked.

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Chris: Hence the backpack. It all makes sense now. Also, after all their discussion about Broadcom's approach to quadrupling prices somehow actually being cheaper, Gartner came out and called that assertion, quote, disingenuous, and noted that customers should expect to pay between two and 500 % more on their next renewal.

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Ned: Okay.

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Chris: Overall, attendance to the conference was not officially announced that I could find anyway, but based on the word on the street, it was down significantly. Still, many people did report that a lot of the tech sessions were solid. If there's something of interest to you, go watch it. They will be available to stream starting on August 30th.

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Ned: The erstwhile Windows Control Panel gets a stay of execution. The Windows Control control panel has been with us since version 1.0 back in 1985. For much of its 39-year tenure, the control panel was the go-to for adjusting system settings and changing aspects of the operating system. The collection Delegation of applets began to migrate in the Windows 8 era over to the newer and more modern-looking settings app. For instance, display controls and network functionality were migrated away. For a fleeting moment, it seemed that the migration was going to be complete and the control panel deprecated. According to a Microsoft blog post stating, The control panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the settings app. Boom, there you go. But before you dawn your hat of indignation and take up pitchforks to storm the Redmond fortress, the post was later amended to say, Many of the settings in control panel are in the process of being migrated to the settings app, which is basically status quo. Why Microsoft changed the post is still a mystery. Whether it was public outcry, an honest mistake by an overzealous intern, or the harsh realization that you cannot get to the sync center any other way, it remains to be determined.

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Ned: What is clear is that the 2024 H2 version of Windows 11 still has the control panel in it. So the phone and modem applet is safe for now. For now.

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Chris: D dramatic. So cool, cool, cool. They're making another wearable AI thingy because they just can't help themselves. I From the, I can't believe Ned stole my bit from this, and it's in the same goddamn tech update Department. A company called Plod created a wearable device they're calling NotePin. It is powered by AI and is supposed to help you with remembering your whole life. All for the low, low price of $80 per year, $170 up front, and 100% of your dignity. Like, literally, we just got finished, marking another device that's basically this, that is also called a pin, that was a massive failure. And then this thing comes out. Now, okay, fine. It's not all negative. A couple of things it's got going for it. It's a much more rational design. No screen, no lasers, No cameras, 20 hours of active battery life, and it's cheaper. Also, its use cases are more limited. The company refers to it as a, quote, memory capsule. Basically, you tap it and it it records, and it does AI things to what it records, and then you can access that shit later.

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Ned: Awesome.

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Chris: But still, think of how gross everyone feels when somebody turns on their AI note taker in a Zoom meeting. Does anyone really think it's going to be super cool to roll into a business meeting or, hell, even to a happy hour after work with what looks like a silver suppository hanging off their clothes? This thing, I don't know. It rings as though it's like a pocket protector, except somehow yet less useful. But sure. If you want one, go get one. Knock yourself out. They are available for pre-order, and it's estimated to be delivered in late September.

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Ned: Do you think they accept payment in the form of a Rabbit R1?

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Chris: Asking for a friend.

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Ned: No, it's for me. I'm not even going to pretend. I have the device. It has been turned on once.

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Chris: It's one more time than I expected it to be turned on.

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Ned: Indeed. All right, that's it. Go away now. Bye.