Apple has released an official extension for the Windows and Mac versions of Chrome that lets you use passwords stored in your iCloud Keychain. For anyone who uses Chrome as their browser and iCloud Keychain in lieu of a dedicated password manager, this could make bouncing between Windows and Mac computers much easier.

The release of the extension means that if you’ve used Safari to automatically generate strong passwords on other platforms, those can now be available to you in Chrome when you’re prompted for a login. Passwords created in Chrome for Windows will also sync back to iCloud so they’ll be available on Apple devices as well.

The extension is called iCloud Passwords and is available now in the Chrome Web Store. Details of the…

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Apple releases Chrome extension for iCloud passwords
Source: New feed

Abner Li / 9to5Google:

Apple releases an iCloud Passwords browser extension for Chrome on Windows  —  Besides iTunes, Apple’s biggest offering on Microsoft’s operating system is the iCloud sync client for files, photos, and mail.  Apple is now extending its presence on Windows with an iCloud Passwords Chrome extension.

Daniel Howley / Yahoo Finance:

Microsoft says revenue from its various cybersecurity offerings crossed $10B over the past 12 months, up 40% YoY and ~7% of its total revenue for the year  —  Microsoft (  —  MSFT) is officially a cybersecurity giant.  For the first time on Tuesday, Microsoft disclosed revenue from its various security offerings as

Much like us, [AGBarber] digs all the infinity polyhedra already out there, but laments the fact that almost all of them are too large to be used as desktop distractions conversation pieces. That’s probably because it’s a lot easier to build ’em big, but that didn’t stop [AGBarber] from trying, succeeding spectacularly, and paving the way for anyone who wants to take on the challenge of building a dazzling desk toy of their own.

We all know that all those little strips of LEDs have to be chained together somehow. Wires would work fine in a larger version, but at roughly softball size, they become a tedious and fiddly nightmare. So what did [AGBarber] do instead? That’s right, they designed two different types of custom corner PCBs. The 3D printed brackets that hold the LEDs and the panels together are no cakewalk, either — [AGBarber] recommends using a resin printer if you have access to one, though it isn’t strictly required.

Everything about this project is open source, including a bonus printable jig for gluing the brackets together at just the right angles. All the steps are well-documented, from applying the mirror film to programming the Wemos D1 mini that controls the lights [AGBarber] programmed in a ton of animations, too, which you can watch after the break.

Want to build a small infinity thingy that isn’t quite so difficult? Crack open a cold one and check out these cool coasters.

Dazzling Desktop Dodecahedron
Source: HackADay

NetBlocks:

Network data indicates the onset of widespread internet disruptions in Myanmar amid reports of a military uprising and the detention of political leaders  —  Network data from the NetBlocks Internet Observatory indicate the onset of widespread internet disruptions in Myanmar on Sunday 31 January 2021 …

Bloomberg:

Many elderly people in the US aren’t getting scheduled for COVID-19 vaccinations due to a lack of familiarity with navigating the internet and web-based signups  —  – Slots go fast, often to those who are more comfortable online  — ‘Health departments are failing’ nationwide, one official says

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Ula raises $20M Series A led by Quona Capital and B Capital Group to expand its food-focused e-commerce marketplace in Indonesia currently serving 20K+ stores  —  Tokopedia, Lazada, Shopee, and other firms created an e-commerce market in Indonesia in the past decade, making it possible for consumers to shop online in the island nation.

The next robot on Mars will touch down in a few weeks, and the views will be truly otherworldly. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover landing will be must-see TV – CNET
Source: CNet

Igor Bosilkovski / Forbes:

Yotta Savings raises $13.2M Series A for its savings account app that instead of interest offers depositors a chance to win prizes ranging from 10 cents to $10M  —  Savings account app Yotta Savings, cofounded by two Under 30 honorees, announced today that it has raised a $13.2M Series A …

Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:

In August, internal research at Facebook showed that ~70% of the platform’s most active civic Groups were considered too toxic to recommend to users  —  The giant struggled to balance Mark Zuckerberg’s free-expression mantra against findings that rabid partisanship had overrun a feature central to its future

A mass of Mars missions set to reach the red planet in February. Plus, will SpaceX get its Starship prototype off the ground? Space calendar 2021: Mars landings, SpaceX Starship tests, NASA launches and more – CNET
Source: CNet

Searching for a great show to watch tonight? Here are some of the best Hulu has to offer. 33 of the best TV shows to see on Hulu – CNET
Source: CNet

Searching for a great show to watch? Here are some of the best Netflix has to offer. 55 best TV shows to stream on Netflix – CNET
Source: CNet

There are an awful lot of machines on the market these days that fall under the broad category of “cheap Chinese laser cutters”. You know the type — the K40s, the no-name benchtop CO2 cutters, the bigger floor-mount units. If you’ve recently purchased one of these machines from one of the usual vendors, or even if you’re just thinking about doing so, you’ll likely have some questions. In which case, this “Chinese Laser Cutters 101” online class might be right up your alley. We got wind of this though its organizer, Jonathan Schwartz of American Laser Cutter in Los Angeles, who says he’s been installing, repairing, and using laser cutters for a decade now. The free class will be on February 8 at 5:00 PM PST, and while it’s open to all, it does require registration.

We got an interesting tip the other day that had to do with Benford’s Law. We’d never heard of this one, so we assumed was a “joke law” like Murphy’s Law or Betteridge’s Rule of Headlines. But it turns out that Benford’s Law describes the distribution of leading digits in large sets of numbers. Specifically, it says that the leading digit in any given number is more likely to be one of the smaller numbers. Measurements show that rather than each of the nine base 10 digits showing up about 11% of the time, a 1 will appear in the leading digit 30% of the time, while a 9 will appear about 5% of the time. It’s an interesting phenomenon, and the tip we got pointed to an article that attempted to apply Benford’s Law to image files. This technique was used in a TV show to prove an image had been tampered with, but as it turns out, Hollywood doesn’t always get technical material right. Shocking, we know, but the technique was still interesting and the code developed to Benford-ize image files might be useful in other ways.

Everyone knew it was coming, and for a long time in advance, but it still seems that the once-and-for-all, we’re not kidding this time, it’s for realsies shutdown of Adobe Flash has had some real world consequences. To wit, a railroad system in the northern Chinese city of Dalian ground to a halt earlier this month thanks to Flash going away. No, they weren’t using Flash to control the railroad, but rather it was buried deep inside software used to schedule and route trains. It threw the system into chaos for a while, but never fear — they got back up and running by installing a pirated version of Flash. Here’s hoping that they’re working on a more permanent solution to the problem.

First it was toilet paper and hand sanitizer, now it’s…STM32 chips? Maybe, if the chatter on Twitter and other channels is to be believed. Seems like people are having a hard time sourcing the microcontroller lately. It’s all anecdotal so far, of course, but the prevailing theory is that COVID-19 and worker strikes have lead to a pinch in production. Plus, you know, the whole 2020 thing. We’re wondering if our readers have noticed anything on this — if so, let us know in the comments below.

And finally, just because it’s cool, here’s a video of what rockets would look like if they were transparent. Well, obviously, they’d look like twisted heaps of burning wreckage on the ground is they were really made with clear plastic panels and fuel tanks, but you get the idea. The video launches a virtual fleet — a Saturn V, a Space Shuttle, a Falcon Heavy, and the hypothetical SLS rocket — and flies them in tight formation while we get to watch their consumables be consumed. If the burn rates are accurate, it’s surprising how little fuel and oxidizer the Shuttle used compared to the Saturn. We were also surprised how long the SLS holds onto its escape tower, and were pleased by the Falcon Heavy payload reveal.

Hackaday Links: January 31, 2021
Source: HackADay

Maggie Miller / The Hill:

A look at the criticism in DC directed at CSET, a State Dept. bureau focused on cybersecurity and emerging technologies formed in the last days of Trump’s admin  —  A newly established State Department bureau focused on cybersecurity and emerging technologies could give the Biden administration …

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:

SetSail raises $26M Series A for its service that recommends when to pay salespeople, by monitoring the progress of sales across CRM, email, and other systems  —  SetSail wants to upend the way sales people get compensated by paying them throughout the sales cycle, rather than a single commission after the sale closes.

The audio-only app is capturing attention and readying for expansion. Clubhouse: What is it and how can you join? – CNET
Source: CNet

Kellen Browning / New York Times:

League of Legends teams in the US recruited 40+ superstar players from Asia since 2016, with an average salary of $460K for a player in a team’s starting five  —  League of Legends teams in the U.S. lag behind their competitors in Asia, so they recruit the world’s best players by offering huge salaries.

Edge and Randy Orton kick off the Royal Rumble match, and Goldberg takes on Drew McIntyre for the WWE Championship. WWE Royal Rumble 2021: Start time, how to watch, full card and WWE Network – CNET
Source: CNet

Silicon Canals:

Riverlane, which spun out of Cambridge University, raises $20M Series A led by Draper Esprit to build Deltaflow, its operating system for quantum computers  —  According to IBM, “Quantum computers can boost the development of new breakthroughs in science, medications to save lives …

Outputting data from a microcontroller over a serial port is convenient and easy, but formatting, visualizing, and analyzing the data can be tedious and frustrating. [Alex Spataru] knows this all too well, having spent too many hours building and debugging custom dashboards. To save himself and others the same frustration in the future, he created Serial Studio, a tool for quickly building dashboards for serial data.

The only input required for Serial Studio to create a dashboard is a simple JSON structure specifying the data’s format, and how it should be grouped and displayed. Originally Serial Studio required all the JSON data to be sent over serial, which is fine for simple data but quickly becomes cumbersome for more complex applications. To solve this, [Alex] added a feature allowing the JSON document with the format information loaded from the computer, while only the data is sent over serial.

Serial Studio includes several visualization options, including raw line graphs, bar/level indicator, dial indicator, the artificial horizon for IMU data, or a map widget. It can also output the formatted data to a CSV file for further analysis in other software. A console window is also included for viewing raw data or debugging purposes. See the usage demo after the break.

We like Serial Studio’s ease of use and adaptability, and we’ll likely use it for our own projects in the future. It is compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac thanks to the Qt framework, and the code is open-source and available on GitHub.

If you’ve ever watched one of the BPS.Space model rocket launch videos, you’ll know how critical data logging, visualization and analysis is for [Joe Barnard]’s work. Serial Studio is perfect for such applications, and [Alex] used it extensively for simulated satellite competitions at his university.

Serial Studio: Easily Visualise And Log Serial Data
Source: HackADay

Big names like Budweiser and Coke are passing on the usual ads, but plenty of others are getting in on the action. Super Bowl 2021 ads: Bud Light and Tide commercials lead the pack so far – CNET
Source: CNet

I think I’m in Ted Lasso withdrawal, you guys; no other shows are quite working for me since I finished it. I just started season 2 of Servant, though, thinking maybe I needed a genre-switch. Servant is still creepy, and Lauren Ambrose’s Dorothy is still both totally unlikeable and totally sympathetic at the same time, which is a marvelous bit of character development. We’ll see how things go, but chances are I’m just going to re-binge Ted again.

This week’s trailers are a nice mixed bag of comedy, teen romance, and spy thriller. Also The Rock!

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

So the trailer gets the obvious out of the way early on— it’s about is a teenager stuck in a repeating time loop a la “Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow,” as lead…

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New trailers: The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, Ginny & Georgia, Young Rock and more
Source: New feed

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:

A now-fixed 10-year-old bug in Sudo used in several versions of Linux allowed any local user to gain root access  —  A now-fixed Sudo vulnerability allowed any local user to gain root privileges on Unix-like operating systems without requiring authentication.

Fancy some elven bread? Author Kyle Newman, author of Heroes’ Feast: The Official D&D Cookbook, talks about what inspired him to make fantasy food a reality. Dungeons & Dragons cookbook lets you cook like a wizard, eat like an orc – CNET
Source: CNet