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Tech News
Blizzard disclosed that World of Warcraft: Forever's launch infrastructure used 3,924 virtual machines spread across 70,480 CPU cores and 251,136GB of memory. That works out to roughly 18 cores and 64GB per virtual machine, and the launch has been widely praised as one of the smoothest in the franchise's history.
A QR code hides its destination until you have already opened it. susQR is a free web tool that checks the link first, and it is worth keeping one tap away.
Wandrd, a camera bag maker, has released its Magnetic Camera Strap system, featuring circular anchors called Torus Links that attach to a camera's eyelets. The anchors use embedded magnets to guide into the strap's CoreLock mechanism and are rated to hold up to 198 pounds, with a wear-indicator system and two-year warranty. Wandrd cofounder Ryan Cope said the company had long considered improving on existing strap designs.
An agent is a language model given tools and a loop. That single design choice explains both why agents can finish real work and why they fail in ways a chatbot never could.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the government is 'looking seriously' at extending its planned under-16 social media ban to reselling platforms Vinted and eBay. The ban, due in March, already covers sites like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat; reports suggest Depop and Facebook Marketplace could also be added. eBay said it looks forward to working with the government, while Vinted has not commented.
Quishing works because a QR code gives you nothing to judge before you commit. Here is what the scams look like in practice and the habits that defuse them.
A tech blogger writes about rewatching the 2011 series Person of Interest, noting it recalls the early 2010s internet culture, including the SOPA/PIPA debates and the Megaupload shutdown. The writer reflects that the show's fictional surveillance AI, the Machine, feels less far-fetched given current technology.
A new router upgrades the link between your devices and the router. Almost nothing people complain about lives on that link, which is why the box rarely delivers the numbers on it.
YouTuber RCMakerLab built a 21-inch, Styrofoam-bodied RC plane resembling the A10 Warthog, powered by two motors salvaged from PC air duster devices rated at 130,000 RPM. The maker shared a full build video showing construction of the wings, flap controls and motor installation, noting the finished 368g aircraft flew 'much faster than I had anticipated.'
A workplace guidance piece outlines a strategy for employees to ensure managers remember approved paid time off, recommending that requests be repeated across multiple communication channels rather than mentioned once. It suggests submitting PTO requests four to six weeks ahead for typical cases, and up to six months ahead for costly, non-movable events like weddings, while always logging the request in a company time-off system.
Political scientists Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf argue in their book Making a Career in Dictatorship that people who hit their 'level of incompetence' don't simply stop advancing, as the classic Peter Principle suggests. Instead, facing career pressure and risk of losing their position, these individuals may take on risky or ethically dubious tasks, or undermine superiors through false accusations or leaks, to force further promotion.
Developer Raph Levien has described a new technique for rendering proportional, kerned bitmap text at high speed on microcontrollers like the RP2350, built for his vic-2350 project that reimagines an 1980s home computer. The method generates optimized machine code on the fly for each string using a just-in-time compiler, avoiding the fixed-character-cell limitations common in microcontroller text rendering. Levien says the approach integrates with his 'race-the-beam' renderer but would also work for writing to a standard framebuffer.