Weekly Tech News Digest: Flash Outage, QQ Browser History Scan, Apple’s WeChat Compatibility Code, Elastic License Shift, AWS Fork, GitHub Alternative, RHEL Free for Small Businesses, Windows 10 Crash Bug, IntelliJ IDEA 20th Anniversary, VS Native WSL2 Support, Brave IPFS Integration, Chromium Package Removal, GDPR Fine, US Intel‑Huawei Supply Cut, Tencent’s Response
This weekly roundup covers a Flash‑related railway incident, QQ’s browser‑history scanning, Apple’s WeChat‑compatible code, Elastic’s move to SSPL, AWS’s Elasticsearch fork, China’s GitHub alternative, RHEL’s free small‑business offer, a Windows 10 crash bug, IntelliJ IDEA’s 20‑year milestone, Visual Studio’s native WSL2 support, Brave’s IPFS support, Linux distributions dropping Chromium, a GDPR fine in Germany, the US revoking Intel‑Huawei supply licences, and Tencent’s defence of its data‑collection practice.
Weekly Architecture Viewpoint: Flash deprecation allegedly caused a railway scheduling issue in Dalian, which the railway bureau clarified was limited to a few newly installed computers; QQ and TIM were found scanning and uploading users' Chrome‑based browser history; Apple’s open‑source code contains a file named make_tapi_happy.h designed to be compatible with Tencent WeChat.
Elastic announced a switch from the Apache 2.0 licence to a dual licence (SSPL and Elastic License), restricting cloud providers from offering Elasticsearch and Kibana as SaaS; AWS responded by creating its own fork that remains under Apache 2.0.
China is developing a domestic GitHub alternative (Gitee) amid geopolitical tensions, while Red Hat’s RHEL will be free for small enterprises (up to 16 nodes) under a new Individual Developer subscription.
A new Windows 10 bug causes a system crash (BSOD) when a specific device‑namespace path such as \\.\globalroot\device\condrv\kernelconnect is opened, even from low‑privilege accounts.
IntelliJ IDEA celebrated its 20th anniversary, noting over 4 million global users; Visual Studio announced native support for WSL 2, simplifying build and debug workflows; Brave became the first browser to support the IPFS peer‑to‑peer protocol.
Several Linux distributions are considering removing the Chromium package after Google announced the removal of certain proprietary APIs; a German retailer was fined €10.4 million for unlawful employee video surveillance under GDPR; the US government plans to revoke Intel’s licences to supply Huawei, citing national‑security concerns; Tencent’s official response claims its QQ browser‑history scan is solely for preventing malicious logins and that no data is uploaded to the cloud.
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