The father of Java calls for the abandonment of Java 8; Apple phones may switch to USB-C chargers; Node.js 18 released | Think Weekly

40s Newsletter

• Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for Office 2013 after April 11, 2023
• Apple ordered to pay consumers 7,000 yuan in Brazil for not including chargers
• Microsoft may put ads in Xbox free games as soon as the third quarter
• Security experts spot new malicious Windows 11 website
• US appeals court rules web scraping is legal
• Musk considers making a takeover offer for Twitter
• EU to use USB-C chargers in all smartphones, including Apple
• Google announces new cookie consent form after being fined 150 million euros
• macOS Server application out of service, existing users can continue to download and use
• The father of Java calls on users to deprecate Java 8
• Visual Studio 2019 v16.11.13 officially released
• eGuideDog Linux 0.9 released
• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) released
• Node.js 18 released
• W3C publishes first draft of WebAssembly 2.0

Industry information

Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for Office 2013 after April 11, 2023

According to Microsoft official news, after April 11, 2023, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for Office 2013 and Skype for Business 2015.

Microsoft emphasizes that after this date, these products will no longer receive security updates, non-security updates, bug fixes, technical support, or online technical content updates, so Microsoft strongly recommends that customers running older versions migrate to Microsoft 365.

Apple ordered to pay consumers 7,000 yuan in Brazil for not including chargers

Recently, a court in the Brazilian city of Goiania ruled that Apple violated consumer protection laws and needed to compensate an iPhone buyer 5,000 Brazilian reals (about 7,000 yuan).

It is reported that Apple does not include a charging plug in the iPhone box, which is an illegal "married sale". According to Article 39 of the Brazilian Consumer Protection Code (CDC), "combination sales" is an abusive and prohibited practice in Brazil, so separate sales of mobile phones and charging plugs are not allowed.

Microsoft may put ads in Xbox free games as soon as the third quarter

On April 17, according to people familiar with the matter, Microsoft is launching a new game monetization plan that allows brands to place ads in free Xbox games. The ads are said to not disrupt the game, such as ads might appear on billboards in racing games. Microsoft does not intend to take a cut of ad revenue, but instead allows game developers and advertising companies to share the revenue, the people said. Microsoft may just want to use this approach to attract more free-to-play game developers to the platform, as it would open up another revenue stream beyond microtransactions.

Security experts spot new malicious Windows 11 website

Recently, CloudSEK cybersecurity company discovered a new malware of a similar nature. The new impostor website looks like the official Microsoft website, but in fact, due to the use of Inno Setup Windows, the distributed file contains the "Inno Stealer" malware installation program. This is a novel information-stealing malware, and no similar samples were found on Virus Total.

US appeals court rules web scraping is legal

Good news for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists: scraping publicly accessible data is legal, according to a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling.

The landmark ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is the latest in a long-running legal battle by LinkedIn to stop rival companies from stealing personal information from users' public profiles. The case was brought to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, but was sent back to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for retrial. In a second ruling published Monday, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its original decision, finding that scraping data that is publicly accessible on the Internet does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which provides for Acts that constitute computer hacking under U.S. law.

Musk considers making a takeover offer for Twitter

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has received about $46.5 billion in funding commitments from Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays, according to a new U.S. securities filing. Musk is studying whether to start a bid for the US social platform Twitter, and the proposal will depend on the completion of financing and due diligence, not the original one.

EU to use USB-C chargers in all smartphones, including Apple

Recently, EU officials voted on a long-planned proposal that would require Apple and all tech companies to adopt USB-C as a universal charger interface and add some new requirements to the wireless charging standard. Currently, the MEP (Members of the European Parliament) of the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection voted 43 to 2 in favour of these proposals, with significant improvements.

Google announces new cookie consent form after being fined 150 million euros

French data watchdog CNIL fined Google 150 million euros a few months ago for violating French laws. Now, Google's official blog announced the use of a new cookie consent form, which is currently limited to YouTube in France, but Google said that it will cover all Google services in the European market in the near future.

macOS Server application out of service, existing users can continue to download and use

Recently, Apple announced that the macOS Server app, priced at $20, will be officially discontinued from April 21, 2022. The last version of the app will be macOS Server 5.12.2.

Designed for macOS and iOS devices, the app allows users to easily share files, schedule meetings, sync contacts, develop software, host their own websites, publish wikis, configure Mac, iPhone and iPad devices, access the web remotely, and more.

The father of Java calls on users to deprecate Java 8

On April 20, James Gosling, the father of Java, tweeted that everyone should upgrade to JDK 17. In his tweet, he said: For developers who are still in Java 8, the latest Amazon Corretto 8 version released contains all the latest updates. CVE defense. Please deprecate Java 8 as soon as possible and upgrade to JDK 17 LTS, which is a huge leap.

Latest technical developments

Visual Studio 2019 v16.11.13 officially released

Major updates

• Fixed regression with vctip.exe in version 16.11.12
• Fixed a bug that prevented some apps built with Address Sanitizer (ASAN) from loading on Windows 11
• Fixed another ASAN issue: multithreaded applications with heap contention could experience deadlocks, false "wild pointer freed" reports, or deadlocks during process exit
• Fixed an issue that caused test executions to run in the background with certain animations even when the associated test execution completed. This can cause a particularly noticeable slowdown on high refresh rate monitors. This fix should improve the experience of using VS on high refresh rate monitors
• Removed unnecessary warnings when connecting to a LiveShare server that did not provide some features used by clients

eGuideDog Linux 0.9 released

eGuideDog Linux is a Linux distribution developed for blind people in China. eGuideDog Linux 0.9 is based on Ubuntu Linux 22.04 MATE modified.

Major updates

• Pre-installed Ekho speech synthesis software
• Pre-installed ibusreader input method screen reading software
• Pre-installed eGuideDog Toolbox
• Made some pre-configurations related to Chinese and screen reading

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) released

Major updates

• Significantly improved usability, optimized performance, and battery life based on the GNOME 42 desktop environment used
• Up to 2x desktop frame rate for Intel and Raspberry Pi display drivers
• Full support for recently released Raspberry Pi devices, from the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2W to the Raspberry Pi 4
• Introducing Rust, a memory-safe systems-level programming language
• Features OpenSSL v3, along with new encryption algorithms for improved security
• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS has a different optimized kernel for each product
• Firefox is now only available in Ubuntu as a snap package

Node.js 18 released

Major updates

• New browser compatible API

  • Global Fetch API (experimental)
  • Web Streams API (experimental)
  • Other global APIs
  • test runner module (experimental)
• Toolchain and compiler upgrades
• V8 engine updated to version 10.1

W3C publishes first draft of WebAssembly 2.0

The draft consists of 3 parts, namely:

• The WebAssembly Core Specification, which describes the 2.0 version of the WebAssembly core standard, is a safe, portable, low-level code format designed for efficient execution and compact representation
• WebAssembly JavaScript Interface - Version 2.0 provides an explicit JavaScript API for interacting with WebAssembly
• WebAssembly Web API - Version 2.0, describing the integration of WebAssembly with the wider web platform. The WebAssembly Working Group maintains a list of recommendations completed since the last recommendation meeting and monitors progress on recommendations in "in-flight"