In honor of legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who tragically passed away today from throat cancer at the age of 65, we wanted to resurface an article Eddie wrote in 2015 for Popular Mechanics. While many know him as the guitar god, Eddie Van Halen was also an inventor and patent holder who has spent the better part of 35 years in his shop, rebuilding guitars and amps, searching for his signature sound. Here's an excerpt from the article: I've always been a tinkerer. It comes from my dad. Growing up, we lived in a house in Pasadena that had no driveway. You used an alley that ran through the middle of the block, behind all the houses, to get to your backyard or the garage. Well, the neighbor behind us had a U-Haul trailer up on car jacks and loaded with cinder block. One night my dad came home from a gig at three in the morning. He had a little heat going, he'd had a few drinks, so he says, "This thing is blocking me from getting in again." So he got out of the car and tried to move it. As soon as he lifted the trailer, the jack fell over, and it chopped his finger off. This was a problem. Besides the obvious reasons, he played clarinet and saxophone. On a sax, you don't need to seal the hole with your finger. A valve closes over it. But with a clarinet, you have to seal the hole, so he took a saxophone valve cover and adapted it to work on his clarinet. Another funny thing was later in his life, when he started losing his teeth. You need your bottom teeth to play a reed instrument. Instead of going to the dentist, he made himself a perfectly shaped prosthesis out of white Teflon that filled the gap where his teeth were missing. He slipped that in when he had to play. Watching him do that kind of stuff instilled a curiosity in me. If something doesn't do what you want it to, there's always a way to fix it... Van Halen was an inventor on three patents related to guitars: A folding prop to support a guitar in a flat position, a tension-adjusting tailpiece, and an ornamental design for a headstock. Two of the three remain today. Slashdot reader nicolaiplum shares the following news about his passing: Rock legend Eddie van Halen has died, aged 65, after a long battle with cancer. "In a band known for its instability -- due in part to a rotating cast of lead singers that most notably includes David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar -- Eddie Van Halen and his brother Alex remained constants, appearing on 12 studio albums that reached across five decades and sold tens of millions of copies," reports NPR. The New York Times adds: "His outpouring of riffs, runs and solos was hyperactive and athletic, making deeper or darker emotions feel irrelevant. The band he led was one of the most popular of all time." This story is part of a new occasional article series we're calling Slashback. We'll be covering a topic that may not be breaking news, but is interesting to us.

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A security flaw in a hi-tech chastity belt for men made it possible for hackers to remotely lock all the devices in use simultaneously. The BBC reports: Qiui's Cellmate Chastity Cage is sold online for about $190 and is marketed as a way for owners to give a partner control over access to their body. Pen Test Partners believe about 40,000 devices have been sold based on the number of IDs that have been granted by its Guangdong-based creator. The cage wirelessly connects to a smartphone via a Bluetooth signal, which is used to trigger the device's lock-and-clamp mechanism. But to achieve this, the software relies on sending commands to a computer server used by the manufacturer. The security researchers said they discovered a way to fool the server into disclosing the registered name of each device owner, among other personal details, as well as the co-ordinates of every location from where the app had been used. In addition, they said, they could reveal a unique code that had been assigned to each device. These could be used to make the server ignore app requests to unlock any of the identified chastity toys, they added, leaving wearers locked in. The sex toy's app has been fixed by its Chinese developer after a team of UK security professionals flagged the bug. They have also published a workaround. This could be useful to anyone still using the old version of the app who finds themselves locked in as a result of an attacker making use of the revelation. Any other attempt to cut through the device's plastic body poses a risk of harm.

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This is a test, please ignore.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A boy and his mother today filed a class action lawsuit against Nintendo for not doing enough to fix a hardware problem common among Nintendo Switch controllers. It is one of several legal efforts related to the issue of "Joy-Con drift" -- a phenomenon where the Switch Joy-Con controllers make in-game characters "drift" even when nobody is moving them. The complaint, filed in Northern California, was brought by a woman named Luz Sanchez and her 9- or 10-year-old son, who, as a minor, is referred to in court documents as M.S. The complaint describes how Sanchez purchased her son a Nintendo Switch in December 2018, when he was 8. Within a month, the complaint alleges, Sanchez's controllers began registering in-game movement when his hands weren't on them. Less than a year later, it says, "the Joy-Con drift became so pronounced that the controllers became inoperable for general gameplay use." Sanchez's mom obligingly purchased another set of controllers, but seven months later, the complaint alleges, they began drifting too. Joy-Con drift is pervasive among Switch devices. (Anecdotally, I've experienced it on two sets of my own controllers). Characters inch left or right as if a ghost was operating the console. Nintendo didn't acknowledge the problem much until July 2019. That month, a thread on the Nintendo Switch subreddit calling out Joy-Con drift received over 25,000 upvotes. More than a dozen Switch owners filed a potential class action lawsuit (PDF) at the time calling Joy-Cons "defective." Lawyers said Nintendo had heard users' complaints for long enough; why didn't the company disclose the issue? The 2019 lawsuit has been moved into arbitration, and the plaintiffs' lawyers recently asked Switch users to submit videos describing their experiences with Joy-Con drift to help bolster their case. Last month, a French consumer group filed a complaint, too, alleging planned obsolescence. Nintendo began fixing Joy-Cons for free, post-warranty, in July 2019, and Nintendo's president apologized for the problem in a financial meeting this summer. But Sanchez's lawyers argue that Nintendo hasn't done enough to fix the issue or warn customers about it up front.

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YouTube has apologised and deleted a tweet from its official Twitter account in which it mocked content creators for making videos that were too long. From a report: Under its own rules, adverts can be placed in the middle of videos at least eight minutes long only - shortened in July 2020 from a 10-minute minimum. This means content creators can make more money by making longer videos. YouTubers can also start monetising their videos only once they have racked up 4,000 hours of watch time. "It is like giving your daughter allowance based on hours studied, not grades, then complaining she studies too much," former Amazon Studios strategy head Matthew Ball said. In the tweet, posted on Saturday afternoon and removed within a couple of hours, YouTube mocked "creators" who "after talking for 15 minutes" would say: "'All right, let's jump straight into the video.'" In a follow-up tweet to its 72 million followers, the platform said the original had been posted in "good faith... but we missed the mark and did not reflect the spirit of the creator community."

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Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said that he isn't sure if 8K resolution will ever be standard for video games, calling it "aspirational technology." From a report: Talking to Wired, Spencer said," I think 8K is aspirational technology. The display capabilities of devices are not really there yet. I think we're years away from 8K being -- if it ever is -- standard in video games." Spencer's comments come despite the Xbox Series X being able to support 8K output. However, while it may technically be able to push video at a resolution of 7680 x 4320, there are more factors to consider, chiefly being if anyone even has an 8K television or monitor to view such visuals on. According to Wired's chat with Liz Hamren, head of gaming engineering at Xbox, Microsoft's data suggests that 4K TV adoption is less than what publishers may think, and so that suggests 8K adoption is still years away at least.

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An anonymous reader writes: Google today launched Chrome 86 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Chrome 86 brings password protections for Android and iOS, VP9 for macOS Big Sur, autoupgrades for insecure forms, focus indicator improvements, and a slew of developer features. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser and a major platform that web developers must consider. In fact, with Chrome's regular additions and changes, developers have to stay on top of everything available -- as well as what has been deprecated or removed. Chrome 86, for example, deprecates support for FTP URLs, starting with 1% of users and ramping up to 100% by Chrome 88.

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Apple just sent out invites for its upcoming hardware event, all but confirming the arrival of the next iPhone. From a report: The event is scheduled nearly a month to the day after the its last big event, which gave us the Apple Watch Series 6 and two new iPads. A new iPhone was conspicuously absent from the proceedings -- not an entirely unexpected turn of events, of course. CEO Tim Cook confirmed earlier this year that there would be a delay the arrival of the company's new flagship, owing to COVID-19 hardware supply chain issues. The iPhone 12 is set to finally deliver 5G connectivity to Apple's product line, coupled with a new design, chip and a push to OLED for all entries in the line.

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Microsoft said on Monday that Iranian state-sponsored hackers are currently exploiting the Zerologon vulnerability in real-world hacking campaigns. From a report: Successful attacks would allow hackers to take over servers known as domain controllers (DC) that are the centerpieces of most enterprise networks and enable intruders to gain full control over their targets. The Iranian attacks were detected by Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and have been going on for at least two weeks, the company said today in a short tweet. MSTIC linked the attacks to a group of Iranian hackers that the company tracks as MERCURY, but who are more widely known under their monicker of MuddyWatter. The group is believed to be a contractor for the Iranian government working under orders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's primary intelligence and military service.

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Digital Ocean has really good docs, and they strive for simplicity, and they pull it off. Good performance and pricing too. I've migrated all of my network apps to DO. Started using their database platform a year ago, and it "just worked." I don't like all the jargon in the writeup of their new app platform, but it's probably pretty good. Glitch is here too, but I don't think "real" developers get that it'll be useful for them, but it is. The core idea is put your app on GitHub, connect it to a node on the host (Digital Ocean, Glitch, etc), and deploy changes by updating on GitHub. I expect Microsoft will be here too. Imagine a button on the repo that says Deploy (MS bought GitHub recently). We're about to see a huge simplification of writing apps for the net. There's no reason it can't be a lot easier. Note that AWS or Google aren't remotely here, their systems are labyrinthine, designed for the priesthood.

Facebook on Tuesday removed a post from President Trump in which he falsely claimed that Covid-19 is less deadly than the seasonal flu. From a report: Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the company removed the post for breaking its rules on Covid-19 misinformation. President Trump has, by his own admission, played down the threat of Covid-19. Now, while battling his own bout of the disease, he has continued to dishonestly downplay the severity of the virus. His post on Tuesday falsely equated Covid-19 to the seasonal flu. Twitter has shielded the post with a label and is preventing users from retweeting the post.

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Google today announced that G Suite is being rebranded as Google Workspace. In another nod to the Google brand, four-color icons are coming to the Workspace productivity apps: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet. From a report: Workspace is also getting new features, like linked previews, smart chips, Doc creation in rooms, and Meet picture-in-picture. Oh, and there are new pricing tiers, so you can't say it's just a rebrand. In July, Google started integrating Chat, Meet, Docs, and the rest into Gmail. Along with the new name, that integrated experience is now generally available to all paying Workspace customers. Google is promising to bring Workspace to education, nonprofit customers, and consumers "in the coming months." "Work is no longer a physical place that we go to, necessarily," Google Workspace VP Javier Soltero said yesterday in a press briefing. "Even though we've had mobile technology in the past, and people have been able to do some work on the go. The idea that we're able to build and run organizations, governments, financial institutions, any size of business, and do it in a way that doesn't require a physical presence that was previously referred to as an office will stay with us. Not because we will never return to offices, but because I think it's important to note that work will take place everywhere in between and that those offices will take on a different role."

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Posted a braintrust query asking how people are migrating from request in Node after it has been deprecated.

Europe's top court has delivered another slap-down to indiscriminate government mass surveillance regimes. From a report: In a ruling today the CJEU has made it clear that national security concerns do not exclude EU Member States from the need to comply with general principles of EU law such as proportionality and respect for fundamental rights to privacy, data protection and freedom of expression. However the court has also allowed for derogations, saying that a pressing national security threat can justify limited and temporary bulk data collection and retention -- capped to 'what is strictly necessary.' While threats to public security or the need to combat serious crime may also allow for targeted retention of data provided it's accompanied by 'effective safeguards' and reviewed by a court or independent authority.

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We are lucky Trump is so incompetent. In January, if he weren't insane and deaf he could have gotten his approval ratings to 90% simply by doing exactly what science said to do. He would be coasting to a landslide election at this point.