Microsoft’s uses almost 20% of an 8gb system’s ram – for a ad-bloated weather app
The Weather app in macOS consumes five times less memory and isn’t riddled with ads, Windows 11’s app can sometimes reach 1.6GB of usage.
Memory prices are astronomical. Sales of new PC’s are down because people cannot afford systems configured with 32gb or 64gb of ram. Microsoft has been trying to say you can run Windows on systems as low as 8gb, but when your ad-chocked weather app uses up 20% of your system ram, it’s hard to believe any of their claims.
Ransomware targets the decisionmakers
More data on ransomware attacks. This time from Zscaler/ThreatLabz which tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations hit by one ransomware campaign over the course of a month:
The data suggests today’s ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the average victim was a 46-year-old Gen Xer, and three-quarters worked in accounting and finance, sales, operations, HR, or marketing. Half worked in the industrial or IT sectors.
Rather than blasting the same extortion email across an organization, attackers are doing their homework first. Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company’s response.
“The ransomware landscape has shifted from indiscriminate attacks to highly targeted extortion campaigns,” the security outfit wrote. “Rather than targeting executives directly, attackers are increasingly focusing on managers and other key personnel with the authority or influence to accelerate payment decisions.”
Everything is now open source
With the advent of (admittedly mediocre quality) reverse engineered apps via claude coding and tools like Reverse Engineer Anything , you can now create your own version of anything – and people are.
The implications of this are pretty astounding. Is SAS completely dead? What does security look like when everyone makes their own apps? What if we don’t even buy or make traditional apps anymore – but generate whatever software we need on the fly?
Amazing Trek and other movie replicas
Factory Entertainment seems to have a great selection of very high quality movie and show replicas – especially in their Star Trek section.
They even have an 11-foot long oversized cutaway print of the original series Enterprise By Matthew Cushman. Cushman took over 4 years to make the print and even appeared with Adam Savage to talk about it.
AI Helped Create DirectX 11 Driver For QEMU
Phoronix news reports that Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5 were used to create a new Triton Windows DirectX 11 driver for QEMU to help improve graphics acceleration.
The project page is a good read on a simplified virtualization of a modern graphics stack, and you can see the code on Github. Not a lot of data yet on it’s performance.
Claude makes Lego sets for anything
Describe a model or drop in a photo, and Claude designs it in bricks where every piece is actually connected, then you get the full step-by-step manual.
It was able to design a 2,874-piece called Canal Clock Square that takes 487 steps across 498 pages, with 15,880 stud joints.
Rixels – Vector method that reduces texture footprints by 98%
4J Studios has debuted a technology called Rixels which replaces normal texture maps. Instead of individual pixels, each contain one of 23 vector shapes. A standard 512×512 texture in 4J’s Minecraft-like game Reforj required 4MB of memory. But with Rixels, the same sized grid can be made from 20×20 squares, using only 72KB of memory – a reduction of over 98%.
It works best for stylized rendering that must have massive scale.
Widest street legal car
It almost looks like some kind of rendering glitch – but it’s real! Joins the flattest, shortest, and narrowest cars for cool factor.
Wisdom before God
“An excuse is not a good reason, and a good reason does not give you an excuse”
A great clip from the movie Kingdom of Heaven.
“..even when those who move you be Kings, or men of power – your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God, you cannot say, ‘But I was told by others to do thus.’ Or that, ‘Virtue was not convenient at the time.’ This will not suffice. Remember that.”