Car Manufacturer Reinstalls Old Physical Buttons.
Also, Google's IT Department Faces a Breakup.

The Costly Rebirth of the Rotary Dial

Volkswagen, after spending millions on research and development to replace a simple switch with a complex piece of glass, has courageously returned to the physical button today. It turns out that when a driver is trying to adjust the volume, the fastest and safest interface is the one that does not require four context switches, a software update, and an internal memo on the new User Experience paradigm.

Thomas Schäfer, the CEO of Volkswagen Passenger Cars, admitted that the previous all digital controls had inadvertently caused some brand damage, which is a very polite, corporate way of saying that the end users were understandably furious. The company is treating this reversal not as a retreat, but as a hard learned lesson; the lesson being that a well placed tactile switch is, in fact, an excellent feature. We can only assume the team responsible for this groundbreaking discovery will be promoted to the 'Legacy Systems' department, where the good work gets done without the press releases.

Compliance Requests Google to Fire Its Own Browser

The Department of Justice still believes that the company Google has too many fingers in too many departmental pies. Specifically, the DOJ still wants Google to sell off the Chrome browser, treating it like a mandatory asset divestiture in a corporate breakup. It is the IT equivalent of telling a Systems Administrator that they cannot manage both the network infrastructure and the coffee machine schedule; the conflicts of interest are just too vast and impactful on the corporate ecosystem.

This is not the first time a governmental body has asked a high profile employee to leave the building with their severance package; it also appears that regardless of the antitrust case's outcome, the DOJ still intends for Google to break up its core business. It is a long, expensive way for the government to tell a major player that they are just trying too hard to be everyone’s friend.

Lost and Found: LastPass Key Leads to $150M Mishap

For those who treat security as an afterthought, a recent report by security journalist Brian Krebs has shown a $150 million cyberheist linked directly to the 2022 LastPass hacks. The Feds believe this large withdrawal from the corporate petty cash was a direct consequence of an attacker obtaining a cloud backup containing the firm's vault data.

The corporate security team is treating this as a simple administrative oopsie; they forgot to put the vault key in the vault and instead left it in the public shared drive with the access permissions set to 'Everyone'. The primary lesson, as always, is that a third party custodian is still a person, and people are terrible at keeping secrets.

Briefs

• Algorithmic Fatigue: A new post suggests you should kill your social media feeds because they are dictating what you think. Essentially, the internet is one giant, poorly managed corporate meeting where everyone talks over everyone else.
• Universal Security Flaw: Security researchers have found an undocumented backdoor in a common Bluetooth chip used by billions of devices. This is just a friendly, cross platform reminder that nothing is secure and the security team is very sorry, but they are short staffed this quarter.
• Crypto Drama: Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was reportedly thrown into solitary confinement over a television interview. This is the equivalent of getting written up by HR for talking too loudly about your weekend plans near the water cooler.