Eli the Computer Guy

The Office of the United States Trade Representative has reinstated 352 products into its exclusion list, which governs the Chinese imports subject to increased, punitive tariffs as part of the US-China trade war. The revised listing now once again excludes Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) from the added duties. PCBs are used to manufacture motherboards, GPUs, and a range of other electronic components.

The exclusions include “graphics processing modules” and “printed circuit assemblies, constituting unfinished logic board,” which cover PC graphics cards and motherboards. Additional exclusions were granted for PC desktop cases and trackpad units valued at over $100, but not for power supplies exceeding 500 watts.

The development means PCBs coming from China are now free from the 7.5%-25% additional import duties levied at them, which went into effect in January 2021 when the provisions excluding these products expired.

Asus has confirmed that it is slashing graphics card prices by up to 25%. In an email statement earlier today, an Asus representative added that price reductions will be applied to its entry-level, mid-range and high-performance models (not just the RX 6500 XT thankfully). The company cited cuts to the tariffs on US imports from China as a major reason behind the MSRP reductions.

"As a result of the latest tariff lift on Chinese imports from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Gamers and PC enthusiasts will see lower prices on ASUS GeForce RTX 30-series graphic cards starting on April 1st, 2022," an Asus rep

USTR enacted the exclusions to prevent the Trump-era tariffs from causing “severe economic harm” to US interests, including for small businesses and critical supply chains. Numerous tech companies—including Nvidia, Apple, and HP—had urged the Biden administration to lift the tariffs on electronics components that continue to be chiefly made in China.

GPUs "are not manufactured in the US and in only limited amounts in Taiwan,” Nvidia told the USTR in December. “Efforts to create new capacity in countries that presently do not manufacture such products (such as the US and Vietnam) were unsuccessful and were severely hampered by the fallout from COVID-19.”

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Ryan McBeth - https://www.youtube.com/c/RyanMcBethProgramming Stats - 10K views and 200 new subs per month. Increased to 37 millions views and 131K subs

A textbook anti-tank ambush.

Determine range to a tank target using floor height and angle.

NLAW activation distance calculator progress / Калькулятор відстані активації

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Asahi Linux - https://asahilinux.org/2022/03/asahi-linux-alpha-release/

What doesn’t Work

DisplayPort

Thunderbolt

HDMI on the MacBooks

Bluetooth

GPU acceleration

Video codec acceleration

Neural Engine

CPU deep idle

Sleep mode

Camera

Touch Bar

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Elon Musk said he is “giving serious thought” to creating a new social media platform,

“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy,” Mr. Musk said in a tweet. “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” In the accompanying poll, 70% of the more than 2 million respondents voted no.

In a 2018 interview, Agrawal said Twitter should “focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.”

“Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard,” he went on. “And so increasingly our role is moving towards how we recommend content … how we direct people’s attention.”

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Chip designer Arm said that it plans to lay off 12-15 percent of its staff, putting 1,000 jobs at risk.

"Like any business, Arm is continually reviewing its business plan to ensure the company has the right balance between opportunities and cost discipline," the company said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, this process includes proposed redundancies across Arm’s global workforce."

Arm employs more than 6,500 people worldwide, including 3,000 in the UK

“To be successful in the opportunities we have ahead of us, we need to be more disciplined about our costs and where we’re investing. To stay competitive, we need to remove duplication of work now that we are one Arm; stop work that is no longer critical to our future success; and think about how we get work done. It’s essential that we focus on activities that will move our strategy forward at pace.

SoftBank acquired Arm, whose technology powers Apple's iPhone and nearly all other smartphones, in 2016 for $32 billion

Agreed to Sell to NVIDIA September 30, 2020

Semiconductor giant Arm won't be sold to Nvidia after all SoftBank has dropped its plans to sell the British semiconductor and software design company Arm to U.S. chipmaker Nvidia. The Federal Trade Commission had sued to block the $40 billion deal.

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Launched February 21, 2022

I’m currently at 1.47 million on the waiting list. Live not a preregister scenario

No web app, no android app, only iOS

Trump has only posted once. “Get Ready. Your favorite president will see you soon.”

Mastodon instance - Mastodon has web/ android app

DWAC Stock $71.50 a share, 2.66 billion market cap

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your Contributions are not false, inaccurate, or misleading.
your Contributions are not obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, violent, harassing, libelous, slanderous, or otherwise objectionable.
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Ukraine’s Digital Minister urged people to join the channel last month, saying Ukraine is continuing to fight on the cyber front

“We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents. All operational tasks will be given here: https://t.me/itarmyofurraine. There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists.”

Morning! Many targets we attacked yesterday were down. Let’s make some noise with news media today. Please note many of them using Cloudflare so step up by IP not web address.

Previous targets are down. Keep on rolling. Please attack goals below if you still have spare capacities:

Our previous targets don’t feel well… let include a couple more targets to finalize assault. Please keep attacking the previous ones:

Over 311,000 people have joined a group called “IT Army of Ukraine” on the social media platform Telegram, where Russian targets are shared

Dave, a Ukrainian software engineer, who preferred to withhold his surname due to the nature of his comments, told CNBC the group has helped to carry out multiple cyberattacks outside of their day jobs since the war started. He said targets had included Russian government websites, Russian banks and currency exchanges.

“I’m helping the IT Army with running DDoS attacks,” he said.

“I’ve rented a few servers on GCP (Google Cloud Platform) and wrote a bot for myself that just accepts website links, and targets attacks at them whenever I paste them in,” he explained. “I’m usually running attacks from 3-5 servers and each server usually produces around 50,000 requests per second.”

Whenever a list of targets gets shared on the Telegram channel, Dave says he just pastes them into a bot, which took around an hour to create

When asked how successful it has been so far, he said it was hard to say since the attacks are carried out by thousands of people simultaneously. “Combined actions are definitely successful,” he said.

Nikita, a CEO and co-founder of a cybersecurity firm, told CNBC that he’s also in the IT Army of Ukraine Telegram channel. His firm does work for clients around the world and its staff have continued working throughout the Russian invasion. They do “penetration testing” and check IT systems for vulnerabilities.

Nikita told CNBC that he has been trying, via messaging services, to tell Russian citizens what’s really happening in Ukraine amid tight media controls from Moscow. He said he and his hacking team are also publishing Russian credit card details online. “I published like 110,000 credit cards in the Telegram channels,” he said, adding that he wants to inflict economic harm on Russia.

“We want them to go to the Stone Age and we are pretty good at this,” Nikita said, adding that they’re now targeting Russian gas stations with a cyberattack. However, he stressed that he doesn’t hate all Russians and he’s grateful to the Russians who are helping Ukraine.

Yehor, another tech expert who works for an international cybersecurity company remotely from Ukraine, is also juggling his normal role alongside the cyber war.

“I’m trying to make equal time for work and cyberattack. Unfortunately, my family is not with me, so I have more free time than usual,” he added.

Final Thoughts:

Who is a civilian?

Is your infrastructure being used in war?

Are your employees committing crimes?

Do these cyber warriors really know what they are doing?

Additional Reading:

https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1497642156076511233

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/ukrainian-coders-splitting-their-time-between-day-job-and-cyberwar.html

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SPAC December 6th at $10 a share

Currently at $5.22, as low as $3.88

Market cap of 697 million

Valuation of 1.5 Billion in 2015

Layoffs in 2017, 2019

Net Income = 41.6 million

EBITDA = 34.2 million

(loss) income from operations = (25) million

Several large shareholders have urged BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti to shut down the entire news operation

BuzzFeed News, which is part of its content division, has about 100 employees and loses roughly $10 million a year

One shareholder told CNBC shutting down the newsroom could add up to $300 million of market capitalization to the struggling stock.

The company has offered voluntary buyouts to fewer than 30 employees, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the decision is private. The buyout is only available to reporters and editors who cover investigations, inequality, politics or science and have worked for the company for more than a year.

“Though BuzzFeed is a profitable company, we don’t have the resources to support another two years of losses,” Peretti said at the time. “The most responsible thing we can do is to manage our costs and ensure BuzzFeed — and HuffPost — are set up to prosper long-term. That’s why we’ve made the difficult decision to restructure HuffPost to reach profitability more quickly. Our goal is for HuffPost to break even this year.”

Time spent on BuzzFeed properties (on both owned-and-operated and third-party platforms) declined 4% to 186 million hours in Q4, driven by a decline in time spent on Facebook

July 23, 2019 - In a mission statement presented to Buzzfeed News Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith back in February, employees stated that “Our staff is uniting to demand a contract that guarantees paid time off is actually paid. We demand an agreement that requires due process for termination, a diverse newsroom, reasonable severance amid layoffs, a competitive 401(k), rights to our creative works, and affordable health insurance. We believe it’s urgent that our management address unfair pay disparities. We also believe that employees on contract — permalancers, who are paid through a third party but are functionally members of our team — deserve the same treatment.”

“It has been our members’ determination that has finally secured recognition,”

Final Thoughts;

Is an industry as successful as you think?

Are you fighting over profit or investment?

Do your employees have a business culture?

Eli the Computer Guy: Recent Episodes

Eli the Computer Guy