Security and Spying With Listening Devices (Google, Amazon, Microsoft)

• Was DNS intentionally designed to be insecure?

  but noone considered that now-controversial near-truism at all when the core internet protocols were first designed and implemented. the idea of abuse was considered novel in the 1990's when commercialization and privatization brought abuse into the internet world and burst the academic bubble. a lot of old timers blamed AOL and MSN and even Usenet for the problems, but in actuality, it's what humans _always_ do at scale. putting the full spectrum of human culture atop a technology platform designed for academic and professional culture should have been understood to be a recipe for disaster.

• Smart meters in England are mysteriously switching to Welsh

  Bulb says that the problem has occurred in around 200 cases and that it takes five steps to fix it, though if you don't know Welsh, you'll need to get Bulb to talk you through it by way of numbers of button pushes.

  "While we think Welsh is a great language, we understand that in many cases people will want their display to be in English." it jibbered in a statement.

• 'Defnydd heddiw': Smart meter displays in England turn Welsh in bizarre language glitch

  One customer, James Tombs, who lives well over 100 miles from the Welsh border, in West Sussex, told us: "I don't live in Wales and don't know Welsh. One day I saw my meter was in Welsh but ignored it as I was busy. I then came back to it later and realised that the screen was locked, the buttons didn't do anything and the unit wasn't updating. The clock was stuck at 15.47.

• iOS 13 beta exposes iCloud Keychain passwords and usernames

  This allows for access to iCloud Keychain passwords, which pretty much means access to a whole suite of usernames and passwords stored by Apple's cloud service. We can envision the potential for another iCloud hack, only with leaked nudes of early adopter Apple fanatics rather than celebs indulging their promiscuous sides.

• Windows 10 will soon allow third-party voice assistants to take precedence over Cortana

  Watch out for the change is 19H2 - which will be the first bi-annual update to the operating system to be a patch rollup, similar to the old Service Packs, instead of a full new build.

• Google Home integrations are borking left, right and centre

  So what's the problem? Well, from the sound of the workaround, it appears that Google has been mucking about with the API under the hood again.

• Google Assistant currently can’t connect to Philips Hue lights, fix is in the works

  For the past several months, Google Home owners have been encountering spotty issues between Assitant and Philips Hue products. In recent weeks especially, this problem has only gotten worse, and currently, the two products can’t talk to each other whatsoever. For most users, this results in attempting to unlink and relink a Hue account to Assistant, but that only results in an error when trying to relink the two accounts.

Krita 4.2.3 Released

Today we’re releasing Krita 4.2.3. This is mostly a bug fix release, but has one new feature: it is now possible to rotate the canvas with a two-finger touch gesture. This feature was implemented by Sharaf Zaman for his 2019 Google Summer of Code work of porting Krita to Android. The feature also works on other platforms, of course. The most important bug fix is a workaround for Windows installations with broken, outdated or insufficient graphics drivers. The core of the issue is that our development platform, Qt, in its current version needs a working OpenGL or Direct3D installation as soon as there is a single component in the application that uses QML, a technology for creating user interfaces. We have managed to work around this issue and especially users of Windows 7 systems that have become a bit messy should be able to run Krita again.

Games: Eagle Island, Total War: THREE KINGDOMS, Robo Instructus, Ion Fury, TRI: Of Friendship and Madness

• The lovely rogue-lite platformer "Eagle Island" can now be picked up on GOG, Linux build soon

  Heads up GOG fans, Eagle Island from Pixelnicks is now available to pick up from GOG with the Linux build expected soon.

• Total War: THREE KINGDOMS new "Eight Princes" DLC is set 100 years after the main game

  Releasing soon, Total War: THREE KINGDOMS is to get an "Eight Princes" DLC set 100 years after the Three Kingdoms period began. Announced yesterday, Creative Assembly are moving quickly to add in a whole lot more content to THREE KINGDOMS and it does sound pretty sweet. It will feature: an entirely new campaign; eight new playable princes with "substantially different" play-styles with unique buildings, assignments and court options; along with new elite units like cataphracts; four new alignments Wealth, Spirit, Might, and Mind and more.

• Guide a robot with simple programming in "Robo Instructus", out now

  Robo Instructus from Big AB Games, which is mainly a solo-operation, is a puzzle game where you need to guide a robot using a simple programming language. Is it odd to think programming can be relaxing? If so, I guess I'm pretty strange in that way. Even if you don't know any programming, Robo Instructus walks you through things quite easily and getting started with it is pretty quick.

• Grab Ion Fury (previously Ion Maiden) before the price shoots up tomorrow

  Interested in slick retro first-person shooters? You may want to act fast as the price of Ion Fury (previously Ion Maiden) goes up tomorrow. Currently in Early Access, Ion Fury offers a very good preview campaign to play through while you wait for the full release on August 15th. The price is currently around $19.99 but from tomorrow they will bump it up to $24.99.

• TRI: Of Friendship and Madness returns to GOG with Linux support

  After being previously removed from the DRM-free store GOG, TRI: Of Friendship and Madness has now made a return with full Linux support included.