Synology partially drops support for third-party drives in their new NAS offerings

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 17, 2025 by itnerd

I’ve been planning on replacing my QNAP NAS with one from Synology for a few months now. And I also have been recommending them to clients for years now. But I am rethinking both of those based on this story from Tom’s Hardware:

Synology’s new Plus Series NAS systems, designed for small and medium enterprises and advanced home users, can no longer use non-Synology or non-certified hard drives and get the full feature set of their device. Instead, Synology customers will have to use the company’s self-branded hard drives. While you can still use non-supported drives for storage, Hardwareluxx [machine translated] reports that you’ll lose several critical functions, including estimated hard drive health reports, volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analyses, and automatic firmware updates. The company also restricts storage pools and provides limited or zero support for third-party drives.

For reference, precious few companies make hard drives, and Synology is not one of them. As such, a self-branded hard drive is merely a drive from a major vendor, like Seagate, Toshiba, or Western Digital, that gets a new sticker slapped on it alongside a potential custom firmware that serves as a sort of DRM, unlocking the correct functionality from the host device (in this case, a NAS).

The 2024 Synology models and older are not affected by this change. Still, those upgrading to or purchasing the latest Plus Series device, set to be released this year, will have to buy their drives directly from Synology or its certified suppliers to maximize their system. Because of this, you won’t be able to pick from the best hard drives if you get Synology’s latest Plus Series NAS Systems.

Is this about providing the best user experience? Or is this really about taking more money out of users pockets? I can argue this both ways as hard drives compatibility with NAS products can be really fiddly and troublesome at times. So going this route, this solves this problem as Synology has total control. Then there’s the fact that when it comes to issues with NAS products, consumers blame the NAS and not the hard drive company. By going this route, that problem is removed.

But at the same time I have to wonder if this is a way for Synology to line its pockets with cash. I say that because companies like QNAP aren’t going this route. So one has to wonder how much of a problem this really is. I’ve never had an issue with any NAS that I’ve built for myself or for a customer. But I am a small sample size relative to the broader market. Thus it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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TELUS announces two new offers, supporting reforestation efforts for Earth Month 

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 17, 2025 by itnerd

In light of Earth Month, 2025, TELUS is launching two initiatives offering customers the opportunity to join them in reforestation efforts this year. Following two back-to-back record-breaking wildfire years in Canada, reforestation is particularly crucial to climate resilience. According to recent studies, replanted areas that have suffered from wildfires can experience regrowth up to 25% faster than areas that were not replanted.

Buy One, Plant One
From April 17 until May 15, for every new, or certified pre-owned Android device purchased by a new or returning customer, TELUS will plant a tree in a wildfire-affected region of Canada. Additionally, when trading in any preloved device, TELUS will plant a bonus tree. This promotion is eligible in select TELUS and Koodo stores, online or via customer service representatives.

TELUS Tree Totes:
On April 22, TELUS is launching limited-edition Tree Totes at TELUS stores nationwide. These 100% recycled cotton tote bags will be available for $3 CAD, and for every bag purchased, TELUS will plant a tree in wildfire-affected areas in Canada.

To date, TELUS has planted 19 million trees, covering an area equivalent to the size of Vancouver. We’ve also diverted 15 million devices from landfills, including 4 million mobile devices that were upcycled and recycled since 2010. These initiatives build on TELUS’ long-standing commitment to sustainability as a global leader in this space, investing in innovative technology and sustainable business practices to help address the impacts of climate change.

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VERSES Promotes James Hendrickson to President and Chief Operating Officer

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 17, 2025 by itnerd

VERSES AI has announced that James Hendrickson has been promoted to the role of President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of VERSES AI.

The Company is also pleased to announce Dan Mapes is leaving his role as President and has been appointed President Emeritus and Director of Global Development where he will continue to work with global partners and thought leaders on furthering the VERSES mission.

To learn more about Genius, please visit: https://www.verses.ai/genius.

Developers can sign up for Genius beta here: https://www.verses.ai/genius-beta-signup

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Meet Ahlo – a new Canadian-designed smartphone from Bell 

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 17, 2025 by itnerd

Bell has just introduced Ahlo, a new smartphone brand designed in Canada to offer smart design, strong performance, and essential features—all at a smart price.

Built for real life and created with value-conscious users in mind, Ahlo provides the features that matter most, without compromise. The device is now available for $270 outright or $1/month for a limited time through Bell, Virgin Plus, and participating retailers including:

  • Best Buy Express
  • Staples
  • Visions Electronics
  • The Mobile Shop
  • Wireless Kiosk @ Costco
  • Tbooth wireless
  • WirelessWave

Key features include:

  • 6.58″ FHD+ display
  • 50MP quad camera
  • 5000 mAh battery
  • 5G connectivity
  • Fingerprint scanner
  • Android OS
  • 24-month warranty

Ahlo is part of Bell’s effort to give Canadians more choice and better access to well-designed smartphones that focus on real user needs – without unnecessary extras or high price tags.

Check out Ahlo.ca for more details!

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RISA Labs Raises $3.5M to Eliminate Treatment Delays with AI-Powered Workflow Automation in Oncology 

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 17, 2025 by itnerd

Cancer patients don’t just fight the disease – they fight the system. Today, life-saving treatments are routinely delayed by days or even weeks due to manual, error-prone workflows. To solve this, RISA Labs has raised a $3.5M funding round to help healthcare organizations eliminate one of the most persistent barriers to timely cancer care: prior authorization delays. RISA Labs has already proven that faster care is possible by dramatically reducing manual workflows and administrative burden.

The seed was led by Binny Bansal (Flipkart co-founder) with participation from Oncology Ventures, General Catalyst, z21 Ventures, ODD BIRD VC, and Ashish Gupta. The capital will accelerate deployments in the next 100 cancer centers across the country within the next two years. 

RISA’s platform—Business Operating System as a Service (BOSS) – is not another automation bot or AI assistant. It’s a full-stack orchestration engine built for the vertical complexity of healthcare, Instead of relying on humans to push paperwork or brittle bots that break when systems change, BOSS decomposes complex workflows into micro-tasks, then delegates them to a network of intelligent agents—LLMs, digital twins, and reinforcement learners, extending across an institution’s entire software stack. This allows BOSS to create a parallel digital workforce, operating on behalf of teams and alongside them. A 1,000-person institution can function like a 2,000-person one overnight, with digital agents making up half the workforce.

At a leading US cancer center, BOSS reduced prior authorization times from 30 minutes to under five. In just a few months, it processed over $1 million in medications, freed up 80 percent of staff time, and cut administrative costs by 66 percent.

Based in Silicon Valley, RISA is founded by IIT Kanpur alumni and repeat founders, Kshitij Jaggi (CEO) and Kumar Shivang (CTO) who’ve been friends for more than a decade now, who’ve previously built and scaled Urban Health. Their frustration with fragmented, slow, and error-prone healthcare workflows during that journey inspired the duo to take a systems-first approach, leading them to develop a foundational AI operating system that can simulate, understand, and orchestrate entire institutional workflows from end to end.

RISA’s founding team first explored these concepts through research, co-authoring ‘Digital Twin Ecosystem in Oncology Clinical Operations’—an early effort to envision smarter, AI-driven cancer care workflows. This foundational work laid the conceptual groundwork that later translated into tangible improvements in real-world oncology operations.

Looking ahead, RISA plans to extend across multiple nodes within the oncology ecosystem, positioning itself as the AI transformation partner for both operational and clinical workflows. This includes enabling coordination and intelligence across providers, life sciences organizations, and other stakeholders throughout the journey of a drug – extending the company’s long term vision to building a unified layer for AI-driven orchestration in oncology.

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iPhone AI app leaked 55,000 NSFW user stories – and emails too

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 17, 2025 by itnerd

What happens in your AI-generated erotica app… apparently doesn’t stay there.

Cybernews researchers discovered that Novel AI: Book Creator – an iOS app with nearly 2,000 App Store reviews – exposed over 55,000 user-generated stories, some of them heavily NSFW, along with customer support emails and personal data via a misconfigured Firebase database.

Why it matters:

  • Blackmail bait: exposed stories + email addresses = a sextortion goldmine
  • Hardcoded secrets: the app also leaks keys, tokens, and IDs that could give attackers backend access
  • Silent devs: the developers have yet to respond, even months after disclosure
  • Systemic problem: 71% of the 156,000 iOS apps we analysed leak at least one secret

You can read the full Cybernews report here.

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Fubo Retains Exclusive Rights to English Premier League in Canada

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 17, 2025 by itnerd

Fubo announced today it will remain the exclusive home of the Premier League, England’s top soccer league, in Canada. Fubo will stream all 380 Premier League matches and shoulder programming through a multi-year distribution agreement beginning with the 2025/2026 season. 

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.  

Fubo became the exclusive home of the Premier League in Canada ahead of the 2022/2023 season. The renewal further solidifies Fubo’s position as the premier soccer streaming platform in Canada where it also exclusively streams Italian Serie A, Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana matches. In addition to direct soccer rights, Fubo streams matches from Ligue 1, the Canadian Men’s and Women’s national team, the Canadian Premier League, Copa Libertadores, and more. In the U.S. Fubo has exclusive rights to stream select European national team matches from UEFA. 

In addition to exclusive soccer rights, in Canada Fubo streams world-class sports from MLB, the NBA, the NHL, cricket’s IPL and more across over 100 live sports, news and entertainment networks. 

Subscribers can stream Fubo programming in Canada anywhere and at any time, from their mobile device, connected TV or web browser. The Fubo app is available on Amazon Fire TV, Android, GoogleTV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Hisense, iOS, LG TV, Roku, Samsung and Xbox One.   

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New Report From Flashpoint Reveals Sophisticated Surge in U.S. Tax Refund Fraud Scheme

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 17, 2025 by itnerd

Flashpoint just made available a Tax Fraud Threat Landscape report that covers the sharp increase in cybercriminal tax refund fraud schemes just as millions of Americans navigate tax season.

Flashpoint analysts have observed widespread discussions among fraud communities—especially on Telegram and Dark Web forums—about tactics to steal personally identifiable information (PII), file fraudulent returns, and cash out IRS refunds before the real taxpayer ever files.

Some of the most concerning trends include:

  • Exploitation of identity verification systems like ID.me, with fraudsters leveraging stolen selfies, forged documents, and social engineering tactics.
  • A marketplace for “fullz”—complete PII packages—used to impersonate victims and file fake returns via popular tax prep services like TurboTax and H&R Block.
  • Targeted abuse of government programs, such as the Employee Retention Credit and the California Middle Class Tax Refund.
  • Disaster-related fraud, with actors already exploiting aid programs linked to the 2025 LA wildfires.

Telegram remains a major hub for fraud coordination, with thousands of posts sharing step-by-step “sauce” and tutorials. Screenshots of six-figure IRS refunds are common, many accompanied by sales pitches for methods to bypass verification letters and fraud detection systems.

Flashpoint analysts also highlight in the report emerging schemes involving romance scams, job ads, and phishing campaigns—many designed to coax ID.me credentials and IP PINs directly from victims.

You can read the report here: https://flashpoint.io/blog/four-steps-of-tax-refund-fraud/

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MITRE Gets Saved…. For Now

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 16, 2025 by itnerd

This is one hell of a turnaround from this news.

Earlier today, the newly established CVE Foundation announced that it aims to transition the program to a dedicated non-profit model that isn’t dependent on a single government sponsor. The Foundation’s organizers revealed they had been preparing for this possibility for the past year. Which is kind of scary if you think about it as they clearly saw this coming.

But there’s more.

Following the CVE Foundation’s announcement, the CISA has said the U.S. government is extending funding to ensure no continuity issues with the critical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program. Here’s the story via Bleeping Computer:

 CISA says the U.S. government has extended MITRE’s funding to ensure no continuity issues with the critical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program.

“The CVE Program is invaluable to cyber community and a priority of CISA,” the U.S. cybersecurity agency told BleepingComputer. “Last night, CISA executed the option period on the contract to ensure there will be no lapse in critical CVE services. We appreciate our partners’ and stakeholders’ patience.”

BleepingComputer has learned that the extension of the contract is for 11 months.

 Roger Grimes, Data-Driven Defense Evangelist at KnowBe4 had the following commentary:

“It is fantastic to hear that MITRE’s CVE program is being extended, although we could do with less last-minute reprieves. But I’m glad it is being funded. Now the question is — is it being funded at the same level, less, or even better? Because the program has always had a ton of deficiencies for years that the community has been hoping could be improved. That program has been existing on a shoestring budget for years, hanging on by a thread, ready to collapse in usefulness at any minute.”

“MITRE leaders have been begging for more private funding for years. This isn’t a type of program where the program leaders should be begging for funding. It should be fully funded, correctly resourced, and able to do a superb job for its mission. It’s an incredibly valuable resource and the entire cybersecurity community wants to know if it will be given the attention and funding it has always needed for the seriousness of its mission. Great to hear it’s being extended, but the devil is in the details. I hope we can all go to sleep better at night knowing that it is not only getting extended, but will actually be improved and become the service it should have always been…so that the program’s leaders can do less begging for funding and more managing and improving the program.”

While this is something, it’s not good enough. There needs to be consistent stable funding in my opinion given how important this program is as that is one of the key ways that we all stay safe from cyberthreats.

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Vantiq and Obayashi Corporation Collaborate to Power the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 16, 2025 by itnerd

Vantiq announced today a new collaboration with Obayashi Corporation to deliver real-time experiences at the Panasonic Group Pavilion “The Land of NOMO” during the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo. The global Expo is expected to draw over 28 million visitors from around the world, making it one of the most ambitious showcases of innovation, culture and future-shaping ideas this decade. 

Powering this unprecedented experience will require more than infrastructure—it demands intelligence in real-time. That’s why Obayashi Corporation has integrated the Vantiq Intelligent Platform into WELCS place®—a smart building system engineered to instantly sense, analyze and respond to conditions like crowd movement, weather and on-site operations. This dynamic platform will serve as the real-time nervous system for the Panasonic Group Pavilion “The Land of NOMO,” and is set to play a critical role across the Expo, making Vantiq the engine behind one of the most intelligent environments ever built.

Originally designed to enhance comfort and safety across a wide range of facilities—including office buildings, shopping centers, hospitals, hotels and factories—WELCS place® uses intelligent data integration to support smarter environments. For the Expo pavilion, Obayashi selected Vantiq to enable instantaneous processing of real-time data, allowing the space to autonomously adapt to weather fluctuations and crowd dynamics.

Vantiq continues to evolve the Vantiq Intelligent Platform by integrating generative AI, including connections to large language models (LLMs) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks. These capabilities are enabling systems to draw on intuition and human experience—factors that were previously difficult to translate into code—to make smarter, context-aware decisions in real time.

By combining WELCS place®’s proven services and operational knowledge with Vantiq’s real-time processing power and AI-driven adaptability, both companies aim to create intelligent environments that deliver optimal solutions the moment they’re needed.

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