The DeSantis Twitter Fiasco; Sony’s Q Handheld; Microsoft Says Chinese Hackers Target US Infrastructure; ‘Smart Pants’ Immodesty Alerts

This report is about tech, and not politics, but sometimes those worlds collide…or in this case crash! I can’t ignore the fiasco that was supposed to be Ron DeSantis’ big announcement of his presidential campaign yesterday on Twitter Space. As it turned out, it was a colossal catastrophe…for both DeSantis and Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Let’s just say that maybe Musk shouldn’t have laid off quite so many good people and eliminated so many servers. TechCrunch.com reports that after the Twitter Space went live at 3 PM Pacific yesterday, the audio repeatedly glitched in and out…sometimes just playing reverb sounds and distorted voices. At the start, there were about 580,000 listeners who tuned in. By the end, that was down to about 100,000. In retrospect, DeSantis would have gotten 10 to 20 times that audience if he had announced in the normal way…and Elon wouldn’t have gotten embarrassed…if Elon CAN be embarrassed…by the disasterous performance of Twitter Space. 

It’s official…Sony has confirmed that they are working on a PlayStation handheld to make it easier to play your PS5 games. According to theverge.com, it’s dubbed Project Q for now. The system has an 8 inch screen, and honestly looks from renderings like an iPad with a controller stuck on the left and right sides when held in landscape position. Sony says it has “all of the buttons and features of the DualSense wireless controller.” Note that games you play on the Q or whatever it ends up being called must first be installed on an PS5 console…the Q unit is apparently designed to be a companion to the console…and is NOT freestanding like a Steam Deck. Since Sony does have a robust cloud gaming service, it’s possible that at sometime after rollout, the Q device could be made into a freestanding gaming uint. Sony plans to launch the unit later this year…no word was given on how much it might cost.

There have been warnings about this for years…how the tech hasn’t kept up and how the US hasn’t maintained protections for critical infrastructure. Now, Microsoft has warned that it has uncovered “stealthy and targeted malicious activity” by a state-sponsored actor in China aimed at disrupting “critical infrastructure organizations” in the United States. Microsoft says that the ‘Volt Typhoon’ campaign has been active in the US and Guam since 2021. Targets include communications, manufacturing, utility, transportation, construction, maritime, government, information technology, and education sectors. Remember a few years ago when a number of ATMs got hacked because banks were too cheap to upgrade from Windows 7? Microsoft recommends that those affected by Volt Typhoon should close or change credentials for all compromised accounts. Also, businesses, utilities and government agencies need to get serious about keeping up security systems that protect against hackers…you, too. Make sure to keep your anti-virus and security software up to date…or YOUR critical infrastructure…that is, your bank info and hard drives…are at risk. 

A developer is trying to line up support for his great idea…smart pants. Androidpolice.com reports that the developer, Guy Dupont, has come up with jeans that notify you via an app he calls WiFly when you have left your zipper down. It’s unclear how many washes the jeans could take and still retain their claimed intelligence. Another issue potential investors wonder about…if you aren’t likely to check your fly, you aren’t likely to pay that much attention to a notification from an app on your phone, either. Dupont hasn’t put a price point on the denims, but they will no doubt be more than the jeans you’ve been buying. Unless you’re ‘advertising’ something, just check your fly after you use the restroom!

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘technified’ for now.