Tag: TechTips

Enlarge / The branding on the front of an Apple Store retail location. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Apple plans to raise the starting pay of its hourly workers, according to a Wall Street Journal report. In the US, employees’ pay will be at least $22 per hour, which could be higher in some markets. That’s 45 percent higher than it was in 2018.

Additionally, Apple plans to increase starting salaries for corporate workers in the United States. It will also move up some employees’ annual reviews by several months to enact pay increases as soon as July.

In a statement, an Apple spokesperson said:

Enlarge / A slide from TV manufacturer TCL guesses at some details for the next micro-generation of high-end game consoles. (credit: PPE)

With the 2020 release of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, we’ve started to see the era of console games that finally make full use of TVs capable of 4K resolutions (i.e., “Ultra HD” 3840×2160 pixels) that have become increasingly popular in the marketplace. Now, though, at least one TV manufacturer is already planning to support 8K-capable consoles (i.e., 7680×4320 resolution) that it thinks could launch in the next year or two.

Polish gaming site PPL reports on a recent public presentation by Chinese TV and electronics maker TCL. Tucked away in a slide during that presentation is a road map for what TCL sees as “Gen 9.5” consoles coming in 2023 or ’24. Those supposed consoles—which the slide dubs the PS5 Pro and “New Xbox Series S/X”—will be capable of pushing output at 8K resolution and up to 120 frames per second, according to TCL’s slide.

First off, there’s little reason to believe that a lesser-known TV manufacturer has leaked the first official word of Sony and Microsoft’s next console plans. As GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb points out, you can tell TCL is speculating on console makers’ plans “because they put the information up in big letters on a stage. If the company knew what it was talking about, then it would be under a non-disclosure agreement.”

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

In January 2019, a researcher disclosed a devastating vulnerability in one of the most powerful and sensitive devices embedded into modern servers and workstations. With a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10, the vulnerability affected a wide range of baseboard management controllers made by multiple manufacturers. These tiny computers soldered into the motherboard of servers allow cloud centers, and sometimes their customers, to streamline the remote management of vast fleets of computers. They enable administrators to remotely reinstall OSes, install and uninstall apps, and control just about every other aspect of the system—even when it’s turned off.

Pantsdown, as the researcher dubbed the threat, allowed anyone who already had some access to the server an extraordinary opportunity. Exploiting the arbitrary read/write flaw, the hacker could become a super admin who persistently had the highest level of control for an entire data center.

The industry mobilizes… except for one

Over the next few months, multiple BMC vendors issued patches and advisories that told customers why patching the vulnerability was critical.