Why would they give a warning? The result will be increased security at more valuable targets.

Most likely some bored kid who doesn't have any geo-political motivation.

Thanks, but unfortunately some of the information there is wrong or misleading. For example, what they call a "GPS module" is actually just an active antenna, basically a GNSS antenna with a built in LNA.

The bigger issue is that there are a lot of modules that we don't know the contents of. For example, the NimbeLink Skywire LTE modem contains a Sierra Wireless modem, which itself is made from parts from another company. Maybe Chinese, maybe not. Incidentally, the GNSS receiver is likely in there too. Combined cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GNSS modules are quite common.

There doesn't need to be a standard, they can just use USB vendor defined endpoints, or a USB HID vendor defined report. Then the standard WinUSB and HID APIs work, and no driver is required. Plug it in, Windows recognizes it and attaches the appropriate generic USB driver, and the RGB control software sends whatever data is likes.

Lots of USB devices use RGB, such a mice and keyboards. For the RGB the early implementations were using microcontrollers, which often have USB built in.

You won't be able to buy it because they will sell it to China, and then they will build more fabs and they will be for HBM, not DDR.

Utilities are heavily regulated because they need to be. They have demonstrated it time and again. PGE in particular has proven it several well-publicized times that you surely have heard of.

The upshot of these regulations is that utilities including PGE only really make money from new generation projects, so they certainly would like to engage in them. But the longer they run, the more they cost, and the more PGE can charge as a result. This also motivates them to build the least cost-effective options.

%command% -f -CPUCount:6 -CPUPriority:high -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r3840x2160x32

The best solution would have been for hardware vendors to stop using SMBUS and switch to USB. No driver needed.

There is a light version of the patch that only does fixes. If you want all of the content you will have to run Windows, or run the Windows version in some kind of VM. You can use protontricks or steamtinkerlaunch to install the provided openjdk and the required windows runtime and then run the jarfile installer, and copy the 4gb patch into the Apps directory alongside the game executable and run

wine 4gb_patch.exe "SimCity 4.exe"

To install the 4GB patch to a clean install.

I am running SC4 in dwproton.

The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is it's complicated.

Devices with back doors may also dial out from your network. It's common for devices to phone home to check for updates and such so such activity is not necessarily even seen as suspicious, though of course in an enterprise context you should be disabling automatic updates and/or reconfiguring them to use internal servers.

Devices which might be malicious should be segregated onto their own physically isolated networks connected only through firewalls with policies for both ingress and egress so that you can control both types of threat. But it's better still when your software and firmware is OSS, and you build your own images and deploy them to the hardware yourself to have the best chance to avoid the possibility in the first place. Even this doesn't completely preclude such attacks, but it does offer some protection (mostly in proportion to the level at which you're auditing the source files, and the percentage of OSS.)

TL;DR: It's smartest to segregate and whitelist traffic in both directions for sketchy devices.

I don't know that it's really "the EEs" that caused the problem. I suspect it's "the regular programmers who found themselves doing embedded programming jobs". They didn't care how it could be made to work, they just wanted it to work. Most of these haven't even been on USB until recently, they were all on I2C or SPI. However there ARE some standards now and corporations should just use them like everyone else. Since they don't, the semi-pro level stuff is superior, I'm pretty sure the RGB controller I'm using is put out by a one-person company.

Sorry your heart is dead, but a lot of us still understand fun.

Really? Apple produces software which supports RGB LEDs on PCs? What's it called?

To be fair if I were Microsoft I would tell motherboard manufacturers to get a grip and make it a USB device. Hanging it off the SMBUS, where critical stuff like fan control and power management also lives, is kind of insane for controlling some lights.

If it was USB then it could just use WinUSB or even HID. No driver needed, API is very mature.

I don't think it's particularly hard or anything. The bigger issue is getting it signed by Microsoft. Because it's a very low level driver that can interact with critical parts of the hardware, like controlling your fans and power management, the bar is naturally a bit higher than a driver for some random USB device. Therefore every time it gets updated, Microsoft has to check it and sign off on it.

There was some company that was updating it, basically just rebuilding it to keep it compatible with the latest Windows version and getting the driver re-signed. Really though it's something Microsoft should take on themselves and create an API for. I think Gamers Nexus were trying to create some common API for RGB, but I don't know how far they got.

It's going to get nasty when home batteries and solar really start to become the norm and being totally reliant on the grid gets much more expensive. It's inevitable as the cost of solar and batteries keeps falling, while the cost of distribution stays the same or rises due to climate change. As ever, it will be expensive to be poor and not be able to make the up-front investment.