Technology

Itbeen another strange patching month. The usual Patch Tuesday crop appeared. Two days later, we got a second cumulative update for Win10 1903 and 1909, KB 4551762, thathad all sorts of documented problems. Two weeks later, on Monday, Microsoft posted a warning about (another) security hole related to jimmied Adobe fonts.

Predictably, much of the security press has gone P.T. Barnum.

The big, nasty, scary SMBv3 vulnerability

Patch Tuesday rolled out with a jump-the-gun-early warning from various antivirus manufacturers about a mysterious and initially undocumented security holein the networking protocol SMBv3.

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Esports racing, helped by record-setting viewership, is hitting the big time.

Fox Sports said Tuesday it will broadcast the rest of the eNASCAR Pro Invitational iRacing Series, following Sundayvirtual race that was watched by 903,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

While those numbers are far below the millions of viewers who watch NASCAR official races — the last one at Phoenix Raceway reached 4.6 million — it still hit a number of firsts that Fox Sports found notable enough to commit to broadcasting the virtual racing series for the remainder of the season, beginning March 29.

The races will be simulcast on the FOX broadcast network, Fox Sports iRacing and the FOX Sports app. Races will be available in Canada through FOX Sports Racing.

Virtual racing, which lets competitors race using a system that includes a computer, steering wheel and pedals, has been around for years. But itgarnered more attention as the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, has prompted sports organizers to cancel or postpone live events, including the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, NBA, NHL and MLB seasons as well as Formula 1 and NASCAR racing series.

NASCAR ran its first virtual race in the series on Sunday in lieu of its planned race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, which was canceled due to COVID-19. Not only was it the most watched esports event in U.S. television history, it wasSundaymost-watched sports telecast on cable television that day.

&This rapid-fire collaboration between FOX Sports, NASCAR and iRacing obviously has resonated with race fans, gamers and television viewers across the country in a very positive way,& Brad Zager, FOX Sports executive producer said in a statement. &We have learned so much in a relatively short period of time, and we are excited to expand coverage of this brand-new NASCAR esports series to an even wider audience.&

Granted, there aren&t any live sports to watch in this COVID-19 era. Still, it bodes well for the future of esports, perhaps even after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

&The response on social media to last Sundayrace has been incredible,& said four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon, who is announcer for Fox NASCAR. &We were able to broadcast a virtual race that was exciting and entertaining. It brought a little bit of ‘normalcy& back to the weekend, and I can&t wait to call the action Sunday at Texas.&

You can see what the virtual racing looks like here in this clip from Fox Sports.

NASCAR isn&t the only racing series to turn to esports. Formula 1announced last week that it would host an esports series, the F1 Esports Virtual Grand Prix series, with a number of current F1 drivers alongside a number of other stars.

The virtual Formula 1 races will use CodemasterofficialFormula 1 2019 PC game and fans can follow along on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook, as well as on F1.com. The races will be about half as long as regular races, with 28 laps. The first race took place March 22. The first-ever virtual round of theNürburgring Endurance Series kicked off on March 21.

Confused about how updates work in Windows 10? Join the club. Over the years, Microsoft has transformed what was once a straightforward procedure into an ever-changing, often complicated process that varies according to whether you have Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro or an enterprise or education edition — and that varies according to the specific version number of the operating system. As a result, there have been lots of misperceptions about how Windows Update works in Windows 10, and how to best use it.

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Rocket Lab is the latest new space company to feel the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic: The small satellite launcher announced on Tuesday that it would be suspending its next launch, a mission called ‘Don&t Stop Me Now& that was set to take-off from Rocket LabLaunch Complex 1 on New ZealandMahia peninsula on March 30.

The launch is a rideshare mission that includes satellites from a range of customers, including NASA, as well as the US. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and a communications and tech demonstration satellite built by the University of New South Wales, Canberra Space and the Australian government. Rocket Lab says that it has &the full support of [its] customers in pausing operations,& and that it will be working with the New Zealand government and health officials, as well as its customers, in figuring out a new timeframe for the mission, with the launch vehicle and systems on the ground set to &remain in a state of readiness for launch& for the time being.

Rocket Lab said in its statement about the delay that it made this decision in light of the New Zealand governmentMarch 23 announcement that it would be escalating its COVID-19 response to Level 4 as of Wednesday March 25, which means everyone is expected to effectively stay at home, while all non-essential businesses are closed and events are cancelled.

The company, which was founded in New Zealand but now maintains a headquarters in Los Angeles, also said that it &commend[s]& the decision to take this level of action in an effort to stop the spread, and that its team is now working from home for the most part, with a few personnel deemed to be essential remaining on site to ensure site and mission safety.

Rocket Lab also notes that despite pausing its production of new launch vehicles, it has taken an approach of readying rockets and launch pads ahead of time in order to meet rapid-response requirements from its customers, so it has a stock of vehicles ready even with a production stoppage.

So far, the COVID-19 crisis has impacted some launches but not others & SpaceX flew a Starlink mission last week, for instance, but will postpone a planned launch at end of March, while ULA appears to be on track to launch a sixth high-frequency defense communications satellite on behalf of the U.S. Space Force on Thursday.

Itthe late 1980s and this pilot fish is getting his first lessons in PCs and PC architecture. In fact, the first desktop computer that his company buys is quite interesting.

Not unusually for the time, it runs on a pair of floppy drives, but itupgradable: You can add a hard disk later.

The employee using this PC spends about a year filling dozens of floppies withhis programs and data before getting the OK from his boss to purchase a harddisk. Capacity: 10MG. Cost: nearly $1,000.

When the disk arrives, fish and friends open the PCcase and follow the upgrade instructions to install it.The first step is to remove aperforated metal box that takes up the space where the disk will go.Itabout the size of five or six decks of playing cards, has lotsof holes for air circulation — and is plugged into the PCpower supply.Inside the box is a large,heavy power resistor with gold-colored fins. Its purpose is to use as much power as a hard disk would draw, apparently to keep thePCunderdesigned power supply from getting unbalanced by too small aload when no hard disk is present.

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The game developer behind Second Life has abandoned its grand efforts for a virtual reality follow-up to its early 2000s hit.

SF-based Linden Lab announced today that they&ve sold off assets related to Sansar to a small, little-known company called Wookey Search Technologies, which will take over development of the title. Linden Lab will continue developing and maintaining Second Life and it sounds like some of its employees will be joining Wookey. The deal was reported by Protocol.

The game studio had already announced layoffs last month.

Second Life has remained in the limelight of popular culture, and the studio claimed to still be hauling in substantial revenues from the game in recent years. That said, the failure of Sansar is a disaster for Linden Lab, which has focused considerable resources on the effort since it first teased the platform back in 2014.

When the title was announced, VR was at the peak of its hype following FacebookOculus VR acquisition. Though Sansar launched in beta with support for both VR and desktop usage, the slow adoption of VR certainly didn&t help the titlepopularity. The studioleadership has detailed in interviews that the majority of Sansarusers are desktop-based.

Given the evident turmoil at the studio, Sansaruser base will likely be relieved to hear that the studio did their best to give the title a soft landing, though itunclear what resources its new acquirer has access to.