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Biting the hand that feeds IT -- Enterprise Technology News and Analysis
Academics probe Apple's privacy settings and get lost and confused
Matthew Connatser
Just disabling Siri requires visits to five submenus A study has concluded that Apple's privacy practices aren't particularly effective, because default apps on the iPhone and Mac have limited privacy settings and confusing configuration options....
Chinese schools testing 10,000 locally made RISC-V-ish PCs
Simon Sharwood
Today's lesson covers the potential for Loongson's made-in-China architecture to hurt Microsoft and Intel China's long march towards creation and adoption of its own information technology stack has taken a long stride forward after a school district commenced a trial of 10,000 PCs powered by domestically designed processors....
Taiwan quake to hit chipmakers' capex, not chip supply
Laura Dobberstein
Some equipment suffered minor damage, but the silicon show must go on Wednesday's earthquake in Taiwan will hit at least one chipmaker in the wallet, but won't weaken the overall silicon supply chain, according to analyst outfit TrendForce....
World's second-largest eyeglass lens-maker blinded by infosec incident
Simon Sharwood
Japan's Hoya also makes components for chips, displays, and hard disks, and has spent four days groping for a fix If ever there was an incident that brings the need for good infosec into sharp focus, this is the one: Japan's Hoya - a maker of eyeglass and contact lenses, plus kit used to make semiconductor manufacturing, flat panel displays, and hard disk drives - has halted some production and sales activity after experiencing an attack on its IT systems....
Lambda borrows half a billion bucks to grow its GPU cloud
Tobias Mann
Will buy tens of thousands of Nvidia's prized accelerators, which will be collateral for the loan Lambda Labs, operator of a GPU-infused cloud, on Thursday revealed it has secured a $500 million loan to fund the expansion of its accelerators-as-a-service offering....
Tech titans assemble to decide which jobs AI should cut first
Tobias Mann
But don't worry, if tech takes your job, we'll retrain you Of all the tech CEOs touting AI's potential to empower workers, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has been among the most vocal about its ability to replace them....
Feds probe alleged classified US govt data theft and leak
Jessica Lyons
State Dept keeps schtum 'for security reasons' Updated Uncle Sam is investigating claims that some miscreant stole and leaked classified information from the Pentagon and other national security agencies....
Sleuths who cracked Zodiac Killer's cipher thank the crowd
Thomas Claburn
Fifty-one years of community contributions, software, and clever cryptanalysis contributed Three men received recognition in December 2020 for cracking the Zodiac Killer's 340-character cipher (Z340) - but they want to share credit with the community of sleuths who helped with the 51-year code breaking effort....
NASA taps trio of companies to build the next generation of lunar rover
Richard Speed
At $4.6 billion, this Moon malarkey is getting expensive NASA has selected three companies to develop designs for a lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) to transport astronauts around the Moon....
Thank the bots, your blue check is back on X
Brandon Vigliarolo
If you're popular enough at Elon's party, that is What Elon taketh away, Elon also giveth. Fee-free blue checks on Twitter are back, but only for users with a certain number of followers who pay for X Premium....
Google ponders making AI search a premium option
Richard Speed
Ad-free search experience might not be on the cards Google is reportedly considering tweaks to its search engine, including making some AI features subscription-only - an ad-free search experience is seemingly not on the cards....
Ivanti commits to secure-by-design overhaul after vulnerability nightmare
Connor Jones
CEO addresses whirlwind start to 2024 and how it plans to prevent a repeat Ivanti has committed to adopting a secure-by-design approach to security as it gears up for an organizational overhaul in response to the multiple vulnerabilities in Connect Secure exploited earlier this year....
Microsoft's playdate in Google's Privacy Sandbox gets messy
Thomas Claburn
Targeted ads in Edge may be blocked before they even arrive Analysis Inspired by Google's Privacy Sandbox ad tech renovation initiative, Microsoft last month announced plans for a "privacy preserving" mechanism to deliver interest-based ads in its Edge browser....
German state ditches Windows, Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice
Matthew Connatser
'Complete digital sovereignty' ... sounds familiar Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's most northern state, is starting its switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, and is planning to move from Windows to Linux on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions....
Microsoft unbundling Teams is to appease regulators, not give customers a better deal
Richard Speed
Think before you pull the trigger, warn analysts If you're planning to save money by cutting out the unbundled Teams product from your Microsoft 365 subscription, the decision might not be as straightforward as you'd think....
UK govt office admits ability to negotiate billions in cloud spending curbed by vendor lock-in
Lindsay Clark
After slew of AWS deals signed under MoUs, CDDO says current approach might weaken its position Exclusive The UK government has admitted its negotiating power over billions of pounds of cloud infrastructure spending has been inhibited by vendor lock-in....
Vodafone and Three's UK merger hits regulatory roadblock
Paul Kunert
Watchdog concerns about price hikes and consolidation remain unresolved Britain's competition regulator is kicking off a deeper investigation into the potential impact caused by the merger of Vodafone and Three in the UK after neither resolved previously expressed concerns....
Ransomware gang <em>did</em> steal residents' confidential data, UK city council admits
Connor Jones
INC Ransom emerges as a growing threat as some ex-LockBit/ALPHV affiliates get new gigs Leicester City Council is finally admitting its "cyber incident" was carried out by a ransomware gang and that data was stolen, hours after the criminals forced its hand....
65 years ago, America announced the names of its first astronauts
Richard Speed
The Mercury 7: 'Not one of us knew what he was in for' Sixty-five years ago this week, NASA introduced its first astronauts, saying they'd be launched into space in the agency's new capsule. They were immediately dubbed The Mercury 7....
How HashiCorp's license shakeup seeded a new open source rebel
Richard Speed
We're really just getting started, says OpenTofu community member Interview HashiCorp might be less than impressed with the rise of the Terraform fork, OpenTofu, but where Hashi sees challenges, the maintainers of the open source project see opportunities....
Microsoft thinks bundles are great and customers love them
Paul Kunert
Rivals and regulators might disagree, so might users that are paying for software they don't need It's always interesting to see how technology executives crop their marketing messages to suit the audience....
Boffins build world's largest astronomical digital camera to map the heavens
Matthew Connatser
3.2 glorious gigapixels to make 'the greatest movie of all time' Construction of the LSST Camera, destined for the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile has been completed at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Silicon Valley....
Ethernet advances will end Nvidia's InfiniBand lead in AI networks
Simon Sharwood
Desire to build brainboxes will also see optical interconnects go mainstream Three imminent improvements to the Ethernet standard will make it a better alternative to host AI workloads, and that will see vendors back the tech as an alternative to Nvidia's InfiniBand kit, which is set to dominate for the next two years....
OpenStack pushes its first easy-to-upgrade release out the door
Simon Sharwood
'Caracal' improves AI capabilities and is pitched as an alternative to VMware The OpenInfra Foundation has loosed an update of OpenStack on the waiting world and - like everyone else that can spell "virtualization" - has pitched it as fine alternative for those pondering a move away from VMware....
TSMC shrugs off impact of Taiwan earthquake
Laura Dobberstein
Nonetheless DRAM prices may yet feel slight aftershocks Chip maker TSMC has shrugged off the impact of yesterday's earthquake on the east coast of Taiwan....
AWS severs connection with several hundred staff
Brandon Vigliarolo
'Necessary,' 'focusing our efforts,' 'deliver maximum impact' ... sounds just like all the other tech layoffs lately Hundreds of Amazon Web Services employees are being shown the door this week - a move the American technology behemoth said is necessary as it, like many others, moves to streamline operations....
Software engineer helped put Sam Bankman-Fried behind bars, say prosecutors
Dan Robinson
CTO shared code from his laptop with investigation after FTX collapsed Crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction was expedited by the cooperation of the chief software engineer at his FTX crypto exchange, prosecutors have revealed....
Want to keep Windows 10 secure? This is how much Microsoft will charge you
Richard Speed
Hint: It will keep going up Updated Microsoft has laid out the ground rules for getting Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) as market share figures indicate users are still giving Windows 11 a wide berth....
Intel's foundry business bled $7B in 2023 with more to come
Simon Sharwood
CEO Gelsinger promises sunny days ahead as he confirms reorg Revenue at Intel's foundry business declined in 2023, leading to a $7 billion operating loss, and CEO Pat Gelsinger says this year could produce even nastier numbers as he revealed a reorg to help the chipmaker behave more like its rivals....