Meta, Microsoft, etc. form a metaverse organization, Apple is absent; Win 8.1 is about to stop supporting; Xmake v2.6.8 released | Think Weekly

40s Newsletter

• The new MacBook Pro 13-inch is officially on sale: starting at 9999 yuan
• New regulations on WeChat public account: No services related to secondary transaction of digital collections are available
• RISC-V announces new specifications
• Network misconfiguration causes massive outage at Cloudflare
• Meta Microsoft and other giants form a metaverse standard organization: Apple is absent
• Microsoft Announces Stop Selling AI Emotion Recognition Technology, Limits Face Recognition
• Google says Apple and Android phones were hacked by Italian spyware
• Microsoft warns: Windows 8.1 system is about to end support
• Xmake v2.6.8 released
• 7-Zip 22.00 released
• FreeCAD 0.20 released
• IntelliJ IDEA 2022.2 EAP 5 released
• Qt 6.4 Beta Released

Industry information

The new MacBook Pro 13-inch is officially on sale: starting at 9999 yuan

Recently, the first MacBook Pro 13-inch MacBook Pro equipped with Apple's self-developed M2 chip has been opened for pre-order, priced from 9999 yuan, and will be officially released on June 24. The M2 chip is naturally the biggest bright spot. Compared with the M1 neural network engine, the performance is improved by 40%, and the memory bandwidth is increased by 50%. Compared with the 10-core x86 version of the MacBook series, the performance under the same power consumption (15W) is 90% higher. It is worth noting that although the configuration is a lot higher, the price has also risen. The MacBook Pro starting at 9999 yuan only has an 8-core CPU + 10-core GPU + 8GB + 256GB configuration, and the top price needs 18,999 yuan.

New regulations on WeChat public account: No services related to secondary transaction of digital collections are available

Recently, WeChat has updated the "WeChat Public Platform Operation Specifications", adding the entry "Virtual Currency and Digital Collection Transactions", saying that if the account involves virtual currency-related issuance, transactions and financing, such as providing transaction portals. "Once such violations are discovered, the WeChat public platform will order the violating official accounts to rectify within a time limit and restrict some functions of the account until the permanent account is banned according to the severity of the violation."

RISC-V announces new specifications

RISC-V International, the global open hardware standards organization, has announced new RISC-V specifications to be approved in 2022: Efficient Trace for RISC-V (E-Trace), RISC-V Supervisor Binary Interface (SBI), RISC-V Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and RISC-V Zmmul Multiply Only extension. E-Trace defines an efficient processor tracing method using branch tracing; SBI allows developers to write once and run on all RISC-V implementations; UEFI introduces the existing UEFI standard to the RISC-V platform; Zmmul Multiply Only is a low-cost implementation that requires only multiply and not divide operations. RISC-V International's members include Google and Intel. RISC-V is an open source instruction set architecture based on Reduced Instruction Set (RISC) principles, which allows anyone to design, manufacture and sell RISC-V chips and software.

Network misconfiguration causes massive outage at Cloudflare

Recently, cloud service provider Cloudflare suffered a large-scale outage, affecting many websites and services, including League of Legends, Steam, Discord, Gitlab, and more. The outage began at approximately 06:27 UTC and lasted an hour and a half. According to Cloudflare, the incident was caused by a misconfiguration of the network, a common mistake that leads to severe outages. Cloudflare said it modified its network configuration to increase resiliency, but ended up impacting 4 percent of its network, which in turn affected about 50 percent of the HTTP requests it handles.

Meta Microsoft and other giants form a metaverse standard organization: Apple is absent

According to reports, Meta, Microsoft and other tech giants vying to build the concept of the metaverse have just formed an organization to develop an industry standard that will make the digital worlds of these companies compatible with each other. The group, called the Metaverse Standards Forum, announced at its inaugural meeting on Tuesday that its membership includes many of the largest tech companies, from chip makers to gaming companies, as well as existing standards-setting organizations such as the W3C. It is worth noting that Apple is not involved in this organization. But analysts expect Apple to become the dominant player in the space once it launches a mixed reality headset this year or next. Gaming companies such as Roblox and Niantic were also absent from the forum, as were emerging crypto metaverse platforms such as The sandbox and Decentraland.

Microsoft Announces Stop Selling AI Emotion Recognition Technology, Limits Face Recognition

Recently, Microsoft said it would stop selling technology that guesses someone's emotions based on images of faces, and would no longer offer unrestricted access to facial recognition technology. Microsoft's actions show the leading cloud service provider is trying to control sensitive technology itself as lawmakers in the U.S. and Europe continue to weigh sweeping legal restrictions. Microsoft is urging customers to steer clear of privacy violations or situations where the technology might have difficulty, such as identifying minors, but doesn't explicitly prohibit those uses.

Google says Apple and Android phones were hacked by Italian spyware

A hacking tool from an Italian company is being used to spy on Apple and Android smartphones in Italy and Kazakhstan, Google said in a report. According to the report, the tool originated from Milan-based RCS Lab, whose website claims European law enforcement agencies as the company’s clients. "These vendors are facilitating the proliferation of dangerous hacking tools and arming governments that cannot develop these capabilities in-house," Google said. RCS Lab says its products and services comply with European rules and help law enforcement agencies investigate crimes.

Microsoft warns: Windows 8.1 system is about to end support

It is understood that the Windows 8.1 system will reach its end of life (EOL) on January 10, 2023, and Microsoft will soon start warning users of the Windows 8.1 operating system. Users will receive pop-up reminders similar to those used before Windows 7 EOL, Microsoft said. Microsoft said that it does not currently offer a free upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 11/Windows 10, which means users need to consider purchasing a license for a newer Windows version. Microsoft also notes that those who are sticking with Windows 8.1 should consider buying a new PC that supports Windows 11 or Windows 10, as previous Windows 8.1 PCs were "designed with technology from about 10 years ago."

Latest technical developments

Xmake v2.6.8 released

Major updates

• Add qt.qmlplugin rules and qmltypesregistrar support
• Support target group installation
• Generate vcpkg-configuration.json
• Add preprocessor.linemarkers policy to disable linemarkers to speed up ccache/distcc
• Improve xmake run to support running target programs in parallel
• Switch the default value of option/showmenu, which is enabled by default
• Improve the failure error message of the installation package
• Make sure that the generated vsxmake project does not change randomly
• Improved plugin manager to allow multiple plugin management
• Improved configuration options menu

7-Zip 22.00 released

Major updates

• Extract support for extracting APFS images for DMG files
• Additional file timestamps can be stored with 1 ns precision
• Optimized support for TAR files
• New -snz switch to propagate Zone.Identifier stream to extracted files

FreeCAD 0.20 released

Major updates

• Improved Navigation Cube
• Tooltips display the command name to the title
• New section cutting tool Section Cut
• Added Preference Packs to save and distribute user preferences

IntelliJ IDEA 2022.2 EAP 5 released

Major updates

• Full support for Spring 6 and Spring Boot 3 features
• Can debug GraalVM native image binaries
• Support for JAX-RS Generic Web Services URL Patterns declared as @ApplicationPath
• Introduced support for GraphQL requests in the HTTP client
• Kubernetes plugin provides integration with Telepresence tools
• Automatically connect to Docker after restarting the IDE

Qt 6.4 Beta Released

Major updates

• iOS styling for Qt Quick Controls
• Spatial audio support for Qt Multimedia
• Qt for WebAssembly has been upgraded to stable version

• Add three modules:

  • Qt HTTP Server
  • Qt Quick 3D Physics
  • ​Qt VNC Server