David Hanak Welcome to our daily column, where we recap the biggest (and not only) IT and tech stories that happened in the last 24 hours that we feel you should know about.
It could be interest you
Formula E driver suspended for fraud in virtual racing
In yesterday's summary, we wrote about the Formula E pilot, Daniel Abt, who was convicted of fraud. During a charity e-racing event, he had a professional virtual racing player race in his place. The fraud was eventually discovered, Abt was disqualified from further virtual races and fined 10 euros. But that's not all. Today it became clear that even the Audi car manufacturer, which is the main partner of the team for which Abt drives in Formula E (and which is also a family company), does not intend to tolerate this unethical behavior. The car company decided to suspend the pilot and he will thus lose his place in one of the team's two single-seaters. Abt has been with the team since the beginning of the Formula E series, i.e. since 2014. During that time, he managed to climb to the top of the podium twice. However, his engagement in Formula E is probably over for good based on apparent banality. However, it should be noted that even if it is a "stupid" streaming of racing on the Internet, the drivers are still representatives of the brands and sponsors behind them. The news caused a wave of outrage among other Formula E drivers, with some even threatening to stop streaming on Twitch and no longer participate in virtual races.
Linux founder moves to AMD after 15 years, is that a big deal?
Linus Torvalds, who is the spiritual father of the Linux operating system, published a new blog post on Sunday night aimed at developers of various Linux distributions. At first glance, the seemingly harmless and relatively uninteresting message contained a paragraph that caused quite a stir. In his report, Torvalds boasts that he has abandoned the Intel platform for the first time in 15 years and built his main workstation on the AMD Threadripper platform. Specifically on the TR 3970x model, which is said to be able to perform some calculations and compilations up to three times faster than its original Intel CPU-based system. This news was immediately caught on the one hand by fanatical AMD fans, for whom it was another argument about the uniqueness of the latest AMD CPUs. At the same time, however, the news pleased a considerable number of Linux users who run their systems on the AMD platform. According to foreign comments, Linux works very well on AMD processors, but according to many, the adaptation of AMD CPUs by Torvalds himself means that AMD chips will be optimized even better and faster.
Source: Techspot
Demand for VPN services is skyrocketing in Hong Kong amid fears of new Chinese laws
Representatives of the Chinese Communist Party have come up with a proposal for a new national security law that affects Hong Kong and would regulate the Internet there. According to the new law, similar rules for Internet users that apply in Mainland China should start to apply in Hong Kong, i.e. the unavailability of websites such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and their connected services, or significantly enhanced options for monitoring user activity on the web. Following this news, there has been a meteoric rise in interest in VPN services in Hong Kong. According to some providers of these services, searches for passwords associated with VPNs have increased more than tenfold in the past week. The same trend is confirmed by Google's analytical data. So the people of Hong Kong probably want to prepare for when the "screws are tightened" and they lose free access to the Internet. Foreign governments, non-governmental organizations and large investors operating in Hong Kong have also reacted unfavorably to the news, fearing censorship and increased spying by Chinese state agencies. Even though the new legislation, according to the official statement, aims to help "only" with the search and capture of people harming the regime (inciting efforts to secede from HK or other "subversive activities") and terrorists, many see in it a significant strengthening of the influence of the Chinese Communist Party and an effort to further liquidation of the freedoms and human rights of the people of Hong Kong.
Gallery
Sources: Arstechnica, Reuters, Phoronix
